Wanted - Leaders! a study of Negro development

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

.

Wanted - Leaders !

A Study of Negro Development

By

The Rt. Rev. Theodore DuBose Bratton, D. D.

Bishop of Mississippi

PRESIDING BISHOP AND COUNCIL

Department of Missions and Church Extension
281 Fourth Avenue - - New York

1922

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE NEGRO IN AFRICA 5

II. THE NEGRO IN LIBERIA ...... 35

III. THE NEGRO IN HAITI 63

IV. THE SLAVE AND THE FREEDMAN IN

AMERICA 91

V. THE PERIOD OF WAR AND RECONSTRUC
TION 123

VI. THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO . . . 143

VII. THE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE

NEGRO 173

VIII. WHAT OF THE FUTURE? 211

APPENDIX 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY 251

WANTED-LEADERS!

A Study of Negro Development

CHAPTER I
THE NEGRO IN AFRICA

Africa of five hundred years ago, when the
modern nations first dipped into its wild and
troubled life, presented at least as great a variety
of racial characteristics as any other continent.
Natural barriers; climatic influences; the recurring
desert, swamp, and prairie areas; — all tended to
segregate the tribes, and to fix widely different phys
ical characteristics. The ancient Empires of the
Mediterranean had left the posterity of their mixed
families, and the tradition of their mingled relig
ions, on the borders of that great sea. Inevitably
these exercised more or less of influence on the
backward people to the South of them, tingeing
their blood, their characteristics, and their religion,
though in a way difficult to define and to a degree
which baffles measurement. Where effects have
been in the making for many centuries and are
remote from the causes, the links -between them
are not easily traceable. It is only in modern times
that Mohammedanism, for example, has pushed its

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conquests much below the great desert region. In
the time of the slave traffic, the Mediterranean
influence must have penetrated to only a compara
tively short distance up the Nile and down the west
ern coast, while very gradually diffusing itself
through the north Sudan area. In general, we
may approach the study of the Negro in Africa
with little thought of this outside influence, noting
it only where marked traces are discovered either
from ancient or modern sources.

Various students of the negro peoples have di
vided them into families; but the divisions vary,
and no fixed terminology has become so dominant
as to command common consent. For our purpose,
the four Families hereafter described comprise the
African Negroes. A minute study of these families
will reveal many tribal subdivisions, each with dis
tinguishing traits — physical, mental and moral —
developed by environment, and yet plainly traceable
to common family origins. Such a minute study
is not our purpose, and we shall limit our view to
the four Families in whose development we are
especially interested.

I. The Negrito Family. In this Family are
three distinct though kindred tribes — the Pygmies,
the Bushmen, and the Hottentots — supposed to be
the original inhabitants of Africa. As these tribes
are only remotely represented in America, they may
be dismissed with short notice.

They are all of small stature, ranging in height
from four to five feet, and are early mentioned
by the Greek and Roman historians, whose stories

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The Negro in Africa

of the dwarf Pygmies were treated as traveller's
tales until the discoveries of the eighteenth and nine
teenth centuries proved the so-called fables of Ho
mer, Aristotle, and Pliny to be true. From the no
madic, forest-dwelling Pygmies of central Africa,
with their low mental and social development, there
is a distinct advance in their nearest kinsmen, the
Bushmen of the desert regions scattered through
out this same area. Among them, music is a dis
tinct form of expression, and they exhibit a de
gree of artistic ability in the depicting of animal
figures and even of scenes from their marauding
life. More developed still, are the Hottentots of
the South. In mental and moral character, as well
as in mechanical ingenuity, they surpass their kins
men. Language is still meager in power of expres
sion, but the Hottentot kraal or village community
represents a much higher stage of social life than
is found among the Pygmies or the Bushmen. Re
ligiously, too, the Hottentot is on a higher plane
than the related tribes.

The effect of European settlement in the land of
the Bushmen and Hottentots has been disastrous to
these wild people. Dr. Bryce says, "Along the
south bank of the Orange River and to the north
of it, small tribes, substantially identical with the
Hottentots, still wander over the arid wilderness.
But in the settled parts of the colony, the Hotten
tot, of whom we used to hear so much, and, at one
time, feared so much, has vanished more completely
than has the Red Indian from the Atlantic States
of America." The Pygmies are still remote from

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Wanted - Leaders !

the white man's influence. Is it this alone that
saves them from a like fate ?

II. The Sudan Family. These occupy almost
the entire Sudan country, which is the widest part
of Africa, south of the Sahara Desert, and extends
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Abyssinian high
lands on the east. "The whole Sudan is full of
animal excitement. There is never a dull hour for
man or beast. All is conflict, noise and motion.
Even at night there is no repose or solitude." Most
of the great rivers have their source in this region,
in which also are found many lakes teeming with
life. Over much of this area, nature provides all
the necessities of life; literally so, since clothing is
not so classed, the climate favoring the unchanging
garb of nature.

The Sudan country is divided into geographical
zones named after the chief product of each. The
equatorial and torrid belt — the so-called Banana
Zone — abounds in fruits as well as game; next
•above is the Millet Zone, with its combined trees
and grain-fields, millet, sorghum, etc., providing
edible vegetation corresponding to our wheat, corn,
and rice; next above is the Cattle Zone, a prairie-
country, rich in grasses, its fertile lands inviting
agricultural pursuits; above this, and blending into
the Sahara Desert, is the Camel Zone of which no
further mention need be made.

The estimated 80,000,000 people of the Sudan
Family are divided into three fairly distinct types :
(1) The Negritians, a primitive and numerous
negro race which claims our chief interest because

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The Negro in Africa

it provided most of our American Negroes. (2)
The Fellatahs, a mixture of Negritian and Berber,
the latter a branch of the Hamitic family. This
mingling has produced a fairly distinct ruling class.
(3) The Arab toward the eastern section of the
Sudan, who also intermingled with the Negritians,
and became the ruling class of the region to the
eastward.

Each of these types, with its many tribes, inhabits
sections of the three climatic or geographical zones
of the Sudan — the so-called Banana, Millet, and
Cattle Zones — and, since the climate and products
of the zones determine the main characteristics of
the people, we follow the zones in studying the
people.

The characteristics of life, as well as the indus
tries, everywhere vary with the changing physical
geography of a people's habitat ; it is natural, there
fore, to find a general and decided ascent in indus
trial life from the tropical Banana Zone up to the
more temperate Millet, and again up to the Cattle
Zone.

(1) The hot, humid atmosphere of the Banana
Zone, and the abundant, never-failing fruits of
nature supplied without the necessity of human
culture, have developed a thriftless people, in whom
the absence of food-problems has bred an hered
itary distaste for exertion of any kind. Here and
there may be found patches of corn, yams, and
ground nuts, planted by the women and slaves, and
requiring little culture. Fishing, perhaps the most
leisurely of all sports, is indulged in; but hunting

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Wanted - Leaders !

is little followed, human flesh being preferred; for
the people of this zone are cannibals. The making
of implements of warfare is probably done by the
men ; but, where slavery is the habit, no doubt most
manual labor is the task of the slaves — the booty
of war which seems to be the chief pastime.

Polygamy is universal, family life is loose, and
the standards of chastity are correspondingly low.
Wives are bought or captured; and, since fre
quent wars lessen the male population, women are
numerous and cheap. The prevailing standard is
unmoral rather than immoral. Chastity is a matter
of respecting the property of others, and unchas-
tity is punished because it is a violation of this
respect for private property. Women are always
property, first of their parents, and then of their
husbands or owners.

(2) Passing northward into the Millet Zone,
the tropical forests give place to alternate woods
and prairies which commence at about the llth
parallel of north latitude. Here is the great agri
cultural region, grains and nut trees taking the
place of the fruits and shrubs. In addition, cotton
for clothing and other uses has been grown for
many centuries, though, until recent years, for
domestic consumption only. Domestic animals —
cattle, sheep, asses, pigs, etc. — are in use, and wild
animals and birds abound. The latter are both a
source of food and also of peril; and, in the crop-
season, slaves are employed to save the produce
from enemies on land and in air. The problem of
life in the Millet Zone is far more difficult than

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The Negro in Africa

in the Banana, for man must labor for his food,
till the soil, and store up the crops. In many places
wells must be dug through solid rock to supply
water for men, domestic animals, and fowls. In
still others, wood must be hauled over long dis
tances.

Necessity has stimulated quite a remarkable
development of the industrial arts. Potters and
carpenters fashion urns and bins for storing and
protecting grain and other produce. Smiths smelt
iron, with charcoal as the fuel; make hoes, axes,
knives, and other utensils. Leather workers dress
and dye hides, fashioning them into shoes, cloaks,
shields, water-vessels, etc. In one district, the peo
ple have learned to make and to color glass; in
another, to manufacture soap. The weaving of
cotton cloth and dyeing have been practiced for
many centuries.

All the arts, agricultural and industrial, declined
during the flourishing days of the slave-trade, when
the selling of captive slaves furnished the con
querors an easy road to wealth and to the posses
sion of much that their own labor alone had
formerly provided. Gold is an important commod
ity and, stored in quills, is used as a medium of
exchange; but, strangely enough, it seems only in
more modern times to have been fashioned into
coins.

The labor is divided into well-defined crafts.
Besides those already mentioned, there are tailors,
musicians, architects who are also builders, barbers
who also extract teeth, and even manicurists. Slave-

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labor is much in demand; for here, as throughout
the world, until modern times, wherever agricul
tural and mechanical industries flourished, slavery
has prevailed. And just as the ancient and modern
monarchies have depended upon force of arms to
supply the slaves needed, so has it been with the
negro monarchies.

Professor Ely, in his Political Economy, argues,
from this universal practice doubtless, that slavery
is both right and wrong. "There is a time in hu
man development when slavery represents a step in
human progress, the best and longest that men were
able to take. Such a step is always right. It is
wrong, when men have learned how to do better."
Upon this view of the case, a host of African ex
plorers and observers have testified to what they
regard as the obvious advantages of the well-nigh
universal slave-system of the more progressive
tribes. They testify, too, to its partially patriarchal
character in the agricultural regions, where the use
of slaves, as sacrifices to the gods or offerings upon
the death of a king, is practically never found. As
an offset, however, to this rather roseate picture,
is the even more general witness to the fact that
slaves in this zone run away whenever opportunity
offers, and, if chance favors them, well supplied
with the goods and cattle of their masters to com
fort them along the way.

The family life of the Millet Zone is decidedly
above the standard of the more tropical tribes.
Doubtless the possession of property for which
much labor has been expended, and the necessity

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The Negro in Africa

to preserve and to protect it, make for a higher
sense of the duties which the relations of life bring.
The women are more nearly equal in number with
the men, and are relatively more valuable, so that
a substantial price must be paid for a wife. The
more complicated life, involving barns, storehouses,
etc., enlarges the idea of a home and family. The
care of the domestic animals leads up to the care
of the home inmates, and furniture is more plenti
ful and comfortable. The settled life is far more
favorable than the nomadic to the accumulation of
household needs and comforts. Life is both more
complex and more expensive. So, in this zone,
polygamy gives place to monogamy save in the case
of the kings and the rich, who seem to accumulate
wives with wealth. The stable life tends to
strengthen the ties between parents and children.

(3) The Cattle Zone, north of the Millet, is
generally an open prairie, in which trees are scarce
and grass abundant. Here, cattle and horses abound,
many of the former in a wild state, and sheep and
goats thrive. The industries of the Zone also in
clude, to a limited extent, agriculture and manu
facturing. Cattle constitute the wealth of the
country; goats furnish the milk; rice, sweet pota
toes, and a variety of vegetables are the staple
foods ; cotton and indigo are raised both for home
consumption and for trading.

The city of Timbuctoo is one of the commercial
centers of this Zone. Here quantities of products
are exchanged — linen and cotton cloth, shoes of
an ancient pattern, and saddles; iron and copper

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implements, woodenware, pottery, etc., and great
numbers of cattle.

Slavery furnishes the greater part of the labor
in the Cattle Zone; and here as in the Millet Zone,
the slaves generally occupy the position of serfs
to a chief.

Family life is at a decidedly higher stage of
development. While wives are bought, and at a
high price, there is a notable exception in the case
of one tribe, according to whose customs daughters
are allowed the right to be wooed, and the privilege
of accepting or rejecting the suitor. Here only,
among the many tribes of Negritians, there is evi
dence of romantic love so inseparable from mar
riage in our own land. In this Zone not a few of
the tribes are Mohammedans, and in these the
customs of sex relations and family life are largely
dominated by that religion.

Where the Fellatahs dominate, the cleavage be
tween rich and poor is very marked, the homes of
the former being sometimes almost palatial, while
those of the poor are miserable hovels made of
poles, often with sorghum stalks for rafters, and
straw mats for covering, and side-walls. A variety
of architecture and material, however, appears in
the many villages and cities of the Zone, and the
daily sweeping of floors shows a desire for clean
liness unknown to other zones. The men are the
chief supporters of their families, and woman en
joys a liberty elsewhere universally denied her. She
owns her own property ofttimes; and her own
slaves, if the family be rich, to cultivate and gar-

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The Negro in Africa

ner her crops. The wife is treated with respect,
yet is humble and submissive, kneeling in obeisance
to her husband.

Politically, the governments of the Sudan pre
sent much the picture of the old feudal days of
our own ancestors. The king is supreme, and in
him all legislative power is vested, influenced by
the local chiefs of the towns into which the in
habitants are gathered for purposes of protection.
Under the king, a council and chief officers execute
his commands. Each town is administered by its
local chief, who is supreme in his district. All
alike furnish soldiers for the king's army, and pay
tribute to the royal treasury. Below the aristo
cratic class are the freemen; and below them the
slaves, in castes which inhibit all incentive to rise
in the social scale. However crude, a system of
laws is administered, and trials are conducted by
the local chief or by one of the king's officers.
Appeal can be made to the king in case decisions
are felt to be unjust. Penalties are irregular, but
generally extreme, including beheading or burning
or dismemberment in the case of murder, while
severe whipping with rawhide suffices for lesser
offenses.

The remaining two great Families — the Gallas
and the Bantus — inhabit eastern and southeastern
Africa. They are not so largely represented in
America as their kinsmen already mentioned, and
regretfully we must pass them by with short notice
of each.

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III. The Gallas inhabit the region known as
Nubia, lying to the south and west of Abyssinia,
and the region on the two sides of the White Nile
and thence southward almost to Lake Victoria. But
it must be borne in mind that these divisional
names are arbitrarily bestowed upon large groups,
comprising millions of people, divided into scores
of tribes, each more or less distinct in size, color,
and social customs. The northern group of tribes
have sometimes been called Nubians. Some of
these, in time, became mixed with the Hamites,
and, in ancient times, were dangerous enemies of
the Roman Province of Africanus, and even com
pelled Diocletian to withdraw his garrisons from
above the cataracts of the Nile. About 550 A. D.
they were converted to Christianity and welded into
a great people under the leadership of Silko. With
the coming of the Arabs, they were gradually sub
dued, partly by force, still more by amalgamation;
and, by the fourteenth century, they became largely
Mohammedan in religion, while remaining essen
tially Negro in spite of Arab and Bosnian infu
sions. They have oval faces, large black eyes, and
prominent narrow noses; in color, they are dark
mahogany or bronze. Their kinsmen to the East
and South are very similar in color and feature;
and both are fine, sturdy types, the women often
exceedingly graceful. Their social and economic
life is not unlike that of the pastoral and agricul
tural tribes of the Sudan.

The tribes farther south are of a still lighter
color, some being an earthy red, while others, the

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The Negro in Africa

Mangbattu for example, are of a lighter tint than
perhaps any other tribe of Africa.

IV. The Bantus inhabit the vast area from
about Lake Victoria, comprising Eastern Equatorial
and South Central Africa. Of the Equatorial tribes,
the Ugandas are generally the finest types and the
most progressive. Stanley tells us that he found
them to be fine craftsmen. Even more than else
where, Uganda is a land of musicians, who have
developed a great variety of native musical instru
ments. The Congo region also produces a fine race,
physically superior to any of their kinsmen. In
the mountains of the region "one sees magnificent
specimens of human beings, both male and female.
They are a tall, powerful people of dark brown
color, often with regular features."

The tribes to the south of the Equator are among
the very finest in general physical and mental de
velopment; among them are the Zulus, the Kaffirs,
and others nearly as well known to the general
reader. The Zulus, e. g., are tall, shapely and mus
cular, and often with Grecian features, the skin
varying from a light clear brown to blue black.
Some of these tribes are highly developed in fore
sight, self-control, rational interpretation, and gen
eral intelligence. Many are fearless and brave to
the point of foolhardiness, and the stories of the
achievements of some of their warriors read like
the tales of the Scottish chiefs so fascinating to
our boyhood.

But we must content ourselves now with these
brief comments, adding a quotation from The Mind

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of Primitive Man, by Boas. "To those unfamiliar
with the products of native African art and indus
try, a walk through one of the large museums of
Europe would be a revelation. None of our Amer
ican museums has made collections that exhibit this
subject in any way worth while. The blacksmith,
the wood carver, the weaver, the potter — these all
produce ware original in form, executed with care,
and exhibiting that love of labor and interest in
the results of work, which are apparently so often
lacking among the Negroes in our American sur
roundings."

Our studies have revealed, in the negro race, a
great variety of intelligence, often of a very high
order; powers of organization of no slight degree
of development; and thrift that has supplied large
cities as trade centers, of which Timbuctoo is, per
haps, chief. "Neither is the wisdom of the philos
opher absent," says Professor Boas. "A perusal of
any of the collections of African proverbs that have
been published, will demonstrate the homely, prac
tical philosophy of the Negro, which is often proof
of sound feeling and judgment."

The religions of the more advanced tribes, though
differing in many of their practical details of appli
cation to life, may fairly be treated as one. It
should not surprise us to find that there is no known
tribe in Africa, or elsewhere in the world, which
has not a religion; for God "hath not left Himself
without witness" among any people.

Religion does not begin with the Incarnate
Christ. He is not the first revelation of God, but

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The Negro in Africa

His last and complete revelation. Through the per
sonal message of the Incarnate One correcting er
rors, interpreting and confirming mysteries, and
thus revealing the rational in what is inexplicable
and indefinable otherwise, comes the interpretation
of man's natural religion. The fulfilment of all
religion is Jesus Christ; without Whom, religion
has ever degenerated into superstition. In its pri
mary meaning, Religion is the law of relation — per
sonal relation to all that is outside of self — to God,
to one's own complex nature, to man, and to the
world. And since the law of relation is personal,
it is susceptible of an infinite variety of interpreta
tions and applications as personality grows and ex
pands. Upon the growth of the religious sense,
therefore, depends the progress of moral and spir
itual character. The source of enlightenment for
the savage is the great Book of Nature, God's first
volume of His Self-revelation. In the interpreta
tion of this book, manifold elements enter, combin
ing to yield many lessons from its living chapters,
The initial question of all peoples as they looked out
upon the world has been: Whence came it? And
upon the forces of nature: What are they? In a
land filled with wild beasts and reptiles, visited by
storms and floods, subject to earthquakes and vol
canoes, its people a prey to disease and death, what
is the explanation that the African has given ? What
has he thought of sun, moon and stars, and of
earth itself? It is safe to say that his answers to
these questions have been pretty much what other
primitive peoples have given. If the wind blows,

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it is a spirit grown restless ; if the lightning flashes,
it is the angry hiss of a malignant spirit; if sun
and moon travel through the air, they are power
ful gods, far removed, but remotely affecting the
earth; if an eclipse comes, the gods in anger hide
their faces; if wild beasts roar and serpents hiss,
these are the emissaries of evil spirits. Thus every
thing that moves is endowed with life and intel
ligence. The Eskimo, for instance, is persuaded
that a watch is a living thing because its parts move.

Naturally, the African first feared the mysterious
living spirits; then sought to pacify and bribe by
the only offerings valuable in his own eyes — the
food and drink which satisfied and made content.
His idea of spirits was the reflection of his scant
knowledge of himself — a half-true, half-false,
canon of interpretation which becomes wholly false
when the other half is unknown or forgotten; for
the idea of self must also be the reflection of God's
knowledge of us and of His purpose for us and our
knowledge of Him.

In many tribes, a belief in a double personality
prevails, and this the African proves by the wan
dering of oneself when, in the dream of sleep, he
goes upon journeys, meets friends or enemies,
engages in sports, or conflict, and returns, filled with
experiences, to the other self which has been quietly
asleep all the while. And because this dream-self
meets, sometimes, the spirits of the dead, therefore
one of these selves must live after death. This gives
rise, too, to the belief that one of these personal
spirits is not inseparable from the body, but may go

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The Negro in Africa

out at pleasure at any time, and inhabit other men,
or even beasts. This spirit, or Kra, makes its exit
through the mouth always, and since these Kras are
moving about at large, a strange Kra may slip into
the unoccupied place of another, and cause no end
of mischief; it is important, therefore, not to sleep
with the mouth open.

When a man loses his Kra, illness results, and
the witch doctor must be called in, who brings a
good Kra, or dream-soul, in a basket. If successful
in getting this new Kra into the sick man's mouth,
recovery results. So, too, when the Kra of the dead
lingers about the home, sickness is caused, and only
the doctor, by inducing the Kra to move on to the
land of the dead, can thus restore the living to
health. In time, however, among many tribes, the
Kra returns to make his abode in a newborn infant,
whose features and actions disclose the identity of
the Kra. Miss Kingsley notes the incident of an
identification. When a baby has grasped a pipe
shown him, the mother is sure that "he is Uncle
John. See, he knows his pipe!" The reader may
find some correspondence between this notion of the
double personality and those entertained by the
scholarly psychologists of the Caucasian race in
their dissertation upon the supra-normal self, and
like manifestations.

This feature has been dwelt upon because it
serves to convey the point of view of the Negro,
surrounded by the spirits of gods and devils and
dead men, and living too; and the spirits of every
life and force of Nature, — a perfect swarm of

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spirits, nearly all of whom are busy meddling with
the affairs of men, and who must be outwitted or
bribed or won over if disaster is to be avoided. Life
is thus a tragic drama unending, whose comedy,
however, is constantly realized in the outwitting of
the cunning spirits, and the overcoming of the pow
erful by ingenious strategy.

Every tribe has a secret society, through which
every freeman must pass. In the course of this
education, should a boy be found who can see
spirits, he is assigned to the medical profession, and
is apprenticed to a witch-doctor to whom a good fee
must be paid, and who instructs him in the myste
ries of the spirit-world. He accompanies his teacher,
picks up his bedside manner, learns to howl in a
professional way, and, if possible, how to simulate
epilepsy. A knowledge, also of the dispositions of
the prospective patients, their financial standing, the
scandals of the people, is of great value to the
budding doctor. Perhaps this method of practice
may seem absurd; but, in spite of this, many of the
doctors possess a fund of wisdom in dealing with
human nature, and also a store of knowledge of
medical herbs, which has been of great value in later
times to the white explorers and missionaries, as
well as to the Negroes. According to the lights which
they possess, they are guided often by the same
motives which sway the civilized physician, and
apply the same method of investigation employed
by the enlightened scientist. The most that should
be said is that the African doctor is behind the
times. Yet, even here, it is interesting to know, and

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The Negro in Africa

simple justice to Africa to repeat the record, that
for many centuries men of the Yoruba tribe have
known that smallpox is produced by the evil god
Shank-panna whose agents are mosquitoes and
flies; and there are not a few examples of doctors
who examine their patients, locate the disease by
scientific diagnosis, and prescribe both diet and
medicine. In general terms, "religion and medi
cine" are one and the same in the mind of the Afri
can, since all medical practice is contact with the
spirits.

A priestly caste, consisting of three orders, pre
vails in some of these tribes. Each order repre
sents a class of gods. Their office is hereditary,
but is replenished through the secret society of the
tribe which forms a school of training for the
priest, as for the doctor. Idols are much used, to
whom sacrifices are offered in worship of the god
represented.

The very high development in aesthetics is so
conspicuous a characteristic of the Negro as to
make a racial differentiation. No other race is so
musical, no other more given to dancing, no other
so profuse in personal decorations.

The boatman sings all day long, keeping time
with his paddle; the woman pounds grain in time
with her chants; the farmer, with his hoe. Joy,
grief, love, pain, are all expressed in spontaneous
song. In some regions, professional musicians
chant the chronicles of their tribes. Sometimes the
strolling minstrel sings the folklore, . reciting the
experiences of men with animals, of animals with

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Wanted - Leaders !

animals, acting the parts as he sings the story. In
writing of these, Miss Kingsley thus closes her
vivid description: "O! that was something like a
song ! It would have roused a rock to enthusiasm ;
a civilized audience would have smothered its singer
with bouquets!"

Dancing, too, is a mode of expressing feeling,
almost universal. Scarcely a night but somewhere
in a village the dance is in progress. Among all
people, indeed, the bodily expression of inward
emotion is the natural ritual of communication. The
savage does not find vent for his emotions in the
numberless ways acquired by civilized people —
through writing, painting, the drama, discoursive
language and the like; but he combines them all in
the dance, just as at other times they are all
expressed in music. It is a mistake to suppose that
his dancing is always sensuous and frivolous. There
is enough of this, it is true; but at times his deep
est emotions are also thus expressed. There is the
dance of religious fervor, of preparation for war,
of celebration of victory, of lament for loss, in the
planting time, and in the harvest. Such dances
inspire devotion, courage, industry, patriotism, and
tribal unity in a common cause.

But the aesthetics of the Negro are still more
vividly and luridly illustrated in his personal deco
rations, at all times from a sense of beauty, some
times as tribal insignia. Tattooing, in some tribes;
painting, in most of them; the wearing of orna
ments on foreheads, in cheeks or lips or ears or
nose; the filing of teeth, or even the extraction of

24

The Negro in Africa

one or more, are usual forms of decorations. Body-
painting is the practice of the Nile tribes; and, in
the west, the dyeing of hands, feet, eyebrows, and
lips. Artistic head-dresses and the dyeing of hair
seem popular among many tribes. In the cotton
area, the use of fancy dyed cloth prevails. The
styles are graceful and picturesque. Where straw
goods are made, the head-dress is both useful and
ornamental in a high degree.

A natural question is, to what is the backward
ness of the Negro in Africa due? This is not a
merely forensic question. To prejudiced people, it
is dismissed as a waste of time, since to such people
the Negro is incapable of anything better. But
prejudice is, of all mental conditions, the least fa
vorable to the satisfactory solution of any question.
Our question has had varying answers from many
students, among which the following, given in
Dowd's Negro Races, seems a conservative mean.

"The backwardness of the Negro in Africa is
not due directly to lack of mental capacity, but to
unfavorable environment. If any other race had
peopled Africa in early neolithic times, and re
mained there until now, it would have advanced no
higher than the present culture-level of the Negro."

Africa lies almost wholly in the hot, humid zone
of the Tropics, save for the vast Desert of Sahara
to the north. There is, indeed, another vast area
on the temperate side of the Tropic of Capricorn
which, at sight, inspires hope for the development
of a rich, virile civilization ; but an examination of
the isotherms reveals conditions uncongenial to the

25

Wanted - Leaders !

spontaneous development of a high type of civili
zation. Even as low as Natal and Cape Colony,
the coastal belt produces tropical fruits like all the
rest of Africa. In such environs the negro tribes
lived in isolation from other races ; cut off from the
Mediterranean Empire by the Sahara Desert, and
from Europe and Asia by the Atlantic and Indian
Oceans. Whatever stimulus to development may
come from contact with other peoples — and there
is much — was denied to the Negro, save that which
arose from inter-racial conflict among themselves,
an unceasing bar to higher development for any
race, and seemingly inseparable from racial isola
tion.

And yet a distinct progress is clearly manifested
through facts which stand out in eloquent boldness.
On the one hand, we see the Pygmies, without
organization or law or even language save the most
meager, with scarce enough even of settled custom
to fix any habits of moral life. On the other hand,
the most advanced tribes of north and east Africa,
like the Yorubas, the Zulus, and the Kaffirs, exhibit
a marked degree of progress. Here are well-
defined organizations; codes of laws which, how
ever they fall short of ours, are actual codes suf
ficing for them; moral codes which, however far
from the Christian standard, yet form codes to be
obeyed and enforced; a language (in the case of
the Kaffirs) "adequate for the expression of any
ideas whatever"; industries sufficiently developed
to meet backward needs; a highly developed
aesthetic sense; enough of self-control to conserve

26

The Negro in Africa

courage; and a fair degree of steadfastness of pur
pose. Among the very highest type, is found the
practice of the virtues of affection, kindness, and
mutual helpfulness ; of honesty in their own group,
even to punishing the liar — and much more. Who
can gainsay the fact of progress far too great to
be overlooked? Who can say what might have
been attained under more favorable conditions?
Who can say what further progress — slow, very
slow, and deliberate — awaits achievements, in view
of that which, in the past, has been distinctly and,
in many cases, wholly their very own ? It is beside
our purpose to make a comparison of races. Our
study is of the Negro himself; and our findings
prove, what naturally would have been expected of
God's creation, a people worth while in themselves.

What has been the effect of the coming of civi
lized people to these backward races? The well-
nigh universal testimony is proclaimed as a tragic
wail, that contact with the white man has, upon the
whole, been degrading, not elevating to the Negro.
And this is consistently true, though with bright
and hopeful exceptions here and there.

From the demoralizing era of the slave-traffic,
involving robbing, cheating, the violation of the
most solemn treaties, and the bad example of pri
vate life, up to the settling of the Congo, the one
aim of the white man has been his own profit at
whatever cost to the natives. Certain, and often
great, advantages to the Negro have been sought
and gained by the Christian Church and by scien
tific efforts; but these are small beside the hurt

27

Wanted - Leaders !

inflicted by the horde of profit-seeking, selfish for
tune-hunters, to whom the Negro is a savage of the
lower order, to be tramped upon.

To quote Miss Kingsley again : "It is an unfor
tunate concomitant of European civilization that its
first impress has, almost without exception, been dis
astrous to the people of lower degree of culture than
the European standards. For every sincere bearer
of the banner of the Prince of Peace there were a
hundred reckless buccaneers, without one thought
of the spiritual or physical welfare of the 'savage
heathen' whom they met. It is so in the case of
Africa. Down both coasts, the European civiliza
tion marched, one missionary disposed to recognize
the brotherhood of man, and a hundred freebooters
insistent that to the victor belong the spoils.' ' Miss
Kingsley's language is mild, and is quoted because
of its tone.

But happily there is another side here, too, to
relieve the tragic gloom of the picture. Concern
ing the comparatively large endeavors of the Chris
tian missionaries of Uganda in East Africa, and of
those on the West Coast, it is most encouraging to
be able to quote from Dowd :

"Contact with the Europeans has done much to
lift the Waganda (Uganda) from their savagery.
It has diminished wars, human sacrifices, trial by
ordeal; and has reformed the administration of
justice. Many Mission-schools have Christianized
and enlightened the masses. It is claimed that
200,000 (this is eight years ago) of the natives can
read and write. In religious, as in other innovations,

28

The Negro in Africa

however, the transformation has been too sudden,
and not always adapted to native psychology."

This is a mere word about a truly great mission,
on a nation-wide scale, whose success constitutes
one of the really great romances of modern times.
Unhappily, it does not fall to our lot to relate its
history, but the reader will miss much if he fails
to learn the story as told by the English Church
missionaries.

Special attention is called to the closing sentence
of the quotation above; for, in it, the finger is put
upon the crux of the problem of Christian evangeli
zation, whether in Africa or in America, among
the Negroes or the Indians, or wherever one race
evangelizes another. When Bishop Tucker of
Uganda wrrites, one feels himself to be at the feet
of an expert. "Were I asked," he writes, "to give
my opinion as to what, in my estimation, has most
hindered the development and independence of the
native Churches, I should unhesitatingly answer,
that deep-rooted tendency which there is in the
Anglo-Saxon character to Anglicize everything
with which it comes in contact." And recently,
upon his visit to America, Dr. King, President of
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and
formerly Bishop of Zanzibar, expressed substan
tially the same judgment.

The reluctance of the white race, whether in Eng
land or America, to permit the negro race to de
velop his own Christian civilization with all of
racial coloring and aesthetic characteristics, has
long been restively regarded by many of us. Chris-

29

.Wanted - Leaders !

tianity is not a racial, but a catholic, religion; not
obliterating racial characteristics, but regenerating
them. A superficial expression of this is the asser
tion so often made, "religion must adapt itself to
peoples." Christianity is a life, and life is not
adaptable, it is adoptable. Once adopted, it grows
and, therefore, takes form. It is the form that is
adaptable; and when the life is permitted to grow
normally, it appropriates and consecrates the form
that is adaptable to the personality that it inhabits.

Christianity is nowhere and at no time to be
adapted to anybody; but anybody may be adapted
to Christianity, as the power (not the form) of its
life transforms and transfuses man. Racial traits
and tendencies are so slow to change, that it is a
very real question whether they really do change,
or whether they are only modified or quickened or
redirected with the change of environment which
new climes or training, or education produce.

If this be true, the sum total of the process of
civilization would be a Caucasian civilization, and a
Negro, and an Indian, no matter how much each
contributed to the other in the fashioning of his
own. Would it not be a great loss to the culture of
the human family, if all the races were to lose their
predominant characteristics, and were to be reduced
to a dead medium level? But, thank God, this is
impossible, in spite of the seeming ambition of the
Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Saxonize all peoples, and
of the Teuton to Teutonize the world. Statesmen
may have been sometimes unfortunate in applying
the canon of "self-determination"; but it has its

30

The Negro in Africa

place, in creation, a place which the God of infinite
variety has sanctioned.

A glance now, momentary but very earnestly
thoughtful, toward the concrete fruits of the Chris
tian Mission to Africa, will throw another ray of
light upon our own Mission at home. The picture
drawn by close and sympathetic observers is some
thing like the moving picture of a continuous
drama. In the beginning, the converted, tutored
Negroes were much like children with a new toy
among playmates with none. Artificially trained
and educated, moulded in a strange pattern, they
stood aloof from, and above, their less fortunate
old-time fellows, or else reverted to the old type.
Vain and prideful in their new attainments, they
looked down with contempt upon the uninitiated.
This, of course, was not always so; but it was,
perhaps, the natural first consequence of a rapid
change and too quickly acquired distinction among
their own people.

Exceptions there were among the Europeanized
Africans, enough to encourage hope of the better
day. Some there were who would "no more have
dropped their store clothes and gone cannibalizing
than we would." And the new day slowly came
through the gamut of recurring improvements and
relapses which characterizes human progress in
every race. There were the isolated leaders, the
greater in their day because fashioned without a
racial mould, to become by God's grace the ensigns
for the gradual gathering of their several
peoples.

31

Wanted - Leaders 1 •

"Men of large mould, like the Rev. Thomas J.
Marshall, of Porto Novo, who was born in one of
the blackest spots in darkest Africa, and who has
been instrumental in leading a whole people into
the knowledge and practice of Christianity; the
Rev. Jacob Anaman, a native minister of the Gold
Coast, who has been made a fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society; Sir Samuel Lewis, Mayor
of Freetown, a native of Sierra Leone, who, in
1893, was appointed a companion of the Order of
St. Michael and St. George, and was recently dis
tinguished by the Order of Knighthood — the first
pure Negro on whom such honor has been con
ferred. He is an exemplary follower of the Christ.
And Bishop Crowther, the first of his race to be
called to that sacred office, whose story is known to
all the world. Following in his footsteps we have,
at the present time, Bishop Phillips and Oluwole,
two excellent and worthy natives connected with
the Church Missionary Society of the Church of
England/' And last, there is to be added to this
list, Bishop Theophilus Momolu Gardiner, of
Liberia, a native Bushman, recently consecrated and
charged with the sacred mission of leading his
heathen tribe to the foot of the Cross.

These isolated leaders have been and are becom
ing the forerunners of the many lesser who must
be born out of the uplifted population of their
tribes. For until the whole population is so far
elevated that the few exceptional real leaders are
the spontaneous fruit of the tribal tree, real and
permanent progress has not yet been made. But

32

The Negro in Africa

then there will be leadership indeed, because it will
be recognized as the result of the native Christian
life. Such leadership, in fullest sympathy with the
life from which it sprang, will arouse enthusiasm,
and, in the Master's name and power, draw all men
to Him.

CHAPTER II
THE NEGRO IN LIBERIA

TN the previous chapter, attention was called
•*• briefly to the effect, upon the negro races in
Africa, of contact with the whites. It was seen
that, while the efforts of Christian explorers and
missionaries have resulted locally in good to these
backward races in their own land, the benefits have
been vastly more than offset by the widespread
horrors of the white slave-trader and exploiter, and
by the harm resulting from the introduction of the
liquor and the vices of the white man. But how
does it fare with the Negro when his contact with
the white race is elsewhere than in Africa? Or
what is the result when the Negro in Africa is given
an opportunity for self -development under more or
less favorable conditions and with only helpful
contact with the whites? Of the former condition,
the United States accords of course the most illumi
nating example, while the free colony of Liberia
gives the best answer to our second inquiry. These,
together with the negro republics of the Island of
Haiti will prove the surest guides in our study of
what can be made of the Negro and what he can
make of himself under varying degrees of contact
with the white race; therefore, before turning to
our main subject of study, we will consider the
Negro in Liberia and in Haiti.

35

Wanted - Leaders !

On the west coast of Africa, just where the enor
mous back-head of the continent makes its turn
upward, lies the little republic of Liberia. Along
this upward waterline of the head, it stretches for
about five hundred miles, from the Ivory Coast to
Sierra Leone, while its other boundary lines run ir
regularly into the interior, enclosing an area of
41,000 square miles.

In 1816, the American Colonization Society was
organized for the purpose of establishing a home,
in the land of their forefathers, for the American
Negroes who had regained their freedom. Hence
the name Liberia, which was given to the small
area at first acquired from the natives and later
much enlarged. Jehudi Ashmun, an American, is
credited with the actual founding of the colony in
1823.

The first, and perhaps the only, motive of the
Society was to fulfill what they regarded as their
solemn duty to the freed Negroes, and to do this in
a way which they thought ought to be most agree
able to the Negroes themselves. No thought, ap
parently, was given to the tribes who would be
neighbors of the new colonists. In the many
years since the founding of the little Republic, the
population of American Negroes has reached only
the small aggregate of from 14,000 to 15,000, liv
ing in coastal regions. Contrary to expectations
in America (and very likely also in Liberia), of a
spontaneous movement of Negroes to Liberia after
their emancipation, less than 2,000 have availed
themselves, since the Civil War, of the privilege of

36

The Negro in Liberia

returning to the land of their fathers. The balance
of the population is made up of some 40,000 natives
— some of them Christians — upon or within reach
of the coast, and at least a million more who pos
sess the interior. The greater part of these last
are still savages, a few are Christians, while many
have embraced the Mohammedan religion.

It does not require a vivid imagination to picture
the tragic condition of the earlier colonists as they
arrived in the fatherland, and faced a wild coun
try to be subdued, savage kinsmen who were their
foes, a land without law, and a climate without
kindness. These freed Negroes were, by training
and experience, alien to the natives, and strangers
to their fatherland. The story of those early
years must be read elsewhere; but this merest hint
cannot but call forth sympathy for the actors in
the drama.

For twenty-five years the colonization society
directed the colonial policies, until, in 1847, the
colonists declared Liberia free and self-governing,
and fashioned a government modelled after that of
their native America. Since then, the Republic of
Liberia has held its place among the nations of the
world, and its unique position as the only State in
Africa over which the Negro exercises authority.
All the rest of the continent has been divided among
the European nations.

Of the effort of the Church to supply this lonely
colony with her ministrations, it is not our purpose
to speak in detail. That has been done elsewhere.
Our present object is to see what the Liberians

37

Wanted - Leaders !

themselves have accomplished with the assistance
of the Church. We may therefore pass over, with
very brief notice, the story of the Church in
Liberia, until the time when she developed a bishop
of the negro race.

In 1833, through the activities of Governor Hall
and others, a parish was organized at Monrovia
under the auspices of the American Episcopal
Church whose interest in the well-being of the
colony had early been enlisted. Two years later,
Mr. James M. Thompson, a negro layman who, as
lay-reader, had been holding the flock together,
accepted the appointment as missionary on the part
of the Church in America. A small appropriation
was made, and a school was built at Mount
Vaughan and opened, in 1836, with five boys and
two girls as the beginning of an educational work
which has been a feature of supreme importance to
the development of the Liber ian Church and to the
Republic. On Christmas Day of that year, the
Rev. Thomas S. Savage, M. D., arrived from Con
necticut, the first white missionary sent by our
Church to a foreign field.

In 1837, the Rev. and Mrs. John Payne and the
Rev. Lancelot B. Minor, of Virginia, arrived, fol
lowed by others in fairly quick succession. For
fifteen years these devoted servants of our Lord,
battling with an unhealthy tropical climate, labored
to establish the faith of the Colonists and to spread
the Gospel among the neighboring natives. In 1851,
the Rev. John Payne was called home to be conse
crated and sent back as "Bishop of Cape Palmas

38

The Negro in Liberia

and Parts Adjacent"; and, until 1869, he skillfully
guided the enterprises of the Church. It is proba
bly true to say that nowhere and at no time since
the first three centuries of the Christian Era, has
there been so much of heroism, and of tragedy,
bravely and quietly and naturally endured, as in
this mission of Liberia during the period of eigh
teen years which Bishop Payne's Episcopate covered
and in the thirteen preceding it. It is rightly called
the "Period of Establishment," when, at the cost
of quite one-fourth of the splendid lives devoted to
the cause, the foundation of the now native Church
was firmly laid both to resist every shock of heathen
attack and to offer its strength to the superstructure
of the native living Temple of God.

And the call upon faith and zeal, so peremptory
in Bishop Payne's life, was echoed to the Church
at home. The answer came in the persons of both
white and negro volunteers ; among them, the Rev.
Eli W. Stokes, and the Rev. Thomas A. Pinckney,
both of them negro priests.

Though it had been the consistent dream of
Bishop Payne, and his steady labor to realize it,
that Liberia should develop its own pastors, — that
the tree should bear its own appropriate fruit, —
it was not until negro volunteers in America came
forward that he could dare to feel that the tree was
ready for the fruit-bearing so needful to its life. In
1853, the staff of negro clergy was greatly strength
ened by the coming of the Rev. Alexander Crum-
mell, whose father was a native of the Gold Coast.
The Republic soon established the Liberian College,

39

Wanted - Leaders !

of which Dr. Crummell was a distinguished pro
fessor. Throughout its history, College and Church
have been closely associated in developing the Re
public. Already, through the schools which had
gradually grown in number as in attendance, the
boys and girls had been preparing to take their
places in the College, and as teachers and guides and
pastors of their people. The coming of Stokes and
Crummell and Pinckney and their Christian wives,
furnished models in racial kind to both boys and
girls, though Mrs. Thompson, widow of the first
lay-reader, had long been a wholesome example.
Speedily volunteers offered; and, in the Report of
1853, news was sent home of the admission of two
candidates for Holy Orders from among the natives
— Ku Sia, who, upon baptism, had received the
name, Clement F. Jones; and Mu Su, renamed
John Musu Minor. These men, ordained on Easter,
April 16th, 1853, were the first products of the
Liberian Church Schools. Following these ordina
tions, a stream of native applicants, small indeed as
was natural, flowed steadily into the ordained min
istry of the Church.

But evidently the negro colonists of Liberia had
not yet proved their ability to organize and maintain
an independent native Church. This was natural
enough, for the colonists were poor and the Repub
lic itself had not yet learned how to turn its natural
resources to profitable account. Hence the Church
in Liberia had to depend almost entirely on financial
help from the American Church.

40

The Negro in Liberia

In 1855, the Board of Missions in New York,
through its Foreign Committee, took the following
action, which changed the entire status of the work
in Liberia. "Resolved: That the whole extent of
the American Colonial Settlements in Western
Africa, including the State of Liberia and the col
ony of Cape Palmas, is considered as a missionary
station occupied by this Committee." From this
time on, the Mission of the Church was no longer
the Cape Palmas Colony and its near neighbor
hood, but was co-terminous with the whole Prov
ince of Liberia.

This is, therefore, a good time to review the
achievements of these most difficult years. The Car
ralla Messenger, the mission journal published in
Cape Palmas, contains this interesting summary:
"It is just 19 years, last Christmas Day, since the
Rev. Dr. Savage formally opened the Mission at
Mount Vaughan in the only building connected
with it, and this but half finished. On that day,
only about a half-dozen communicants, if so many,
were connected with the Episcopal Church. Since
then, 'through the good hand of our God upon
us,' the Mission has established permanent stations,
of greater or less efficiency, at fourteen different
places, amongst colonists and natives. It has
expended for churches, mission-houses, and school-
houses, a sum not less than one hundred thousand
dollars. In the day and boarding-schools sustained
by it, not fewer than three thousand children and
adults have received the rudiments of a Christian
education. From six, the communicants — some of

41

Wanted - Leaders !

whom are now living, some dead — foreign, colo
nists and natives — have numbered at least three hun
dred. The number, at the present time, is two hun
dred and forty-one. The blessed Gospel is preached
regularly to four colonist congregations, in some
twenty different native tribes, and to one hundred
thousand people. There are now, including the
Orphan Asylum, seven commodious mission-
houses, three churches completed and a fourth
nearly so — two being, of stone, one brick, and one
wood — besides one very superior school-house and
several more indifferent, for colonists and natives.
A more sufficient cause of thankfulness still, is to
be found in the number and character of the schools
connected with the Mission. The High School and
female day-school at Mount Vaughan; the Orphan
Asylum at Harper; the native schools at Fish-
town, Rocktown, Cape Palmas, Cavalla, Hening
Station, Rockbookah, and Taboo; the boarding
and colonist day-school at Bassa Cove, the Female
High School at Monrovia, and the native boarding
and colonist day-school at Clay-Ashland, give evi
dence of earnest and well directed effort to diffuse
Christian instruction throughout the bounds of the
Mission."

But this hopeful, almost buoyant, message was
followed at the close of the next year, 1856, by
great distresses, many deaths of faithful workers,
war among the savage tribes, and hostilities be
tween the Government and the natives, resulting in
the loss of Mission property — all of which brought
disaster, and retarded the work.

42

The Negro in Liberia

The years of the Civil War in America were
especially trying, since revenues from the Mother
Church were much decreased. Work had to be
curtailed. Yet, through all the trials, the laborers
in the field, missionaries, catechists and teachers,
remained steadfast under the leadership of Bishop
Payne who saw clearly that the hope of the Libe-
rian Church lay in the gradual development of the
will and ability to become self-supporting, and the
arousing of missionary zeal toward the unevangel-
ized tribes from the coast inland.

In 1862, the Bishop wrote, "We endeavor always
to impress upon our native converts that the lesson
God means to teach them, by the troubles in Amer
ica, is to exert themselves for their own support and
that of the Gospel in their midst. And they feel
and acknowledge the situation."

In that year, the organization of the Church was
strengthened, and the widely scattered missions
brought into more compact oneness, by the forma
tion of a General Missionary Convocation to bring
the whole Church together in conference and
mutual communion at stated times. A full account
of this appears in The Spirit of Missions for
August, 1862. Later in this year, Mr. Samuel D.
Ferguson, a negro colonist, was appointed Princi
pal of the Mount Vaughan High School, and thus
began his training for the later leadership of the
Liberian Mission.

Before the close of the trying War period, the
Mission sustained the loss of one of its oldest (in
point of service) and one of its most efficient teach-

43

Wanted - Leaders !

ers, Mrs. Elizabeth M. Thompson, who, for twenty-
eight years, taught in our Mission schools. She was
a native of Connecticut, of negro blood, born in
1807. In 1831, she emigrated to Liberia where she
began work as a teacher in an infant-school in Mon
rovia. She later moved with her husband to
Cape Palmas, and was associated with his work
there and at Mount Vaughan, where, in 1833, he
was appointed as lay-reader in charge of our bud
ding work. Her husband died early, and she con
tinued her work as teacher with great devotion until
within a short time of her death, when ill-health
obliged her to resign. She continued lighter labors
in St. Mark's Hospital almost to the end, which
came in April, 1864. Mrs. Thompson was an ex
cellent Christian character, faithful and zealous and
greatly beloved by all, an example to her race, and
her death caused great sorrow in the entire com
munity.

In 1871, after thirty-one years of devoted labor
in foundation-building, Bishop Payne found him
self obliged, by ill-health, to give up his work. Sim
ply and modestly he gives the following account of
his stewardship.

"To the praise of His grace, God has prospered
the work of my hands as well as prolonged my days.
At my own station (Cavalla) I have baptized 352
persons, of whom 187 were adults. In the Mission
I have confirmed 643 persons. I have lived to or
dain Deacons — two foreign, eight Liberians, four
natives — in all, fourteen; of Presbyters, three for
eign, seven Liberians, one Native — in all, eleven;

44

The Negro in Liberia

or, altogether, twenty-five ordinations have been
held. And at twenty-two places along 250 miles of
what was, fifty years ago, a most barbarous heathen
coast, has the Church been planted, and radiating
points for the light of the Gospel established. Nine
churches may be considered established and sup
plied with ministers of the Country. Besides
schools, common and Sunday, we have a High
School for boys, a Training School for young men,
and an Orphan" Asylum to take care of destitute
children in the colonies. The Church and Mission
by God's blessing, may be considered established."

Meanwhile, the Rev. Mr. Auer, the only white
missionary left after the Bishop's withdrawal, had
been even more busy than ever, with his Ameri
can and native negro co-workers, in building up
the waste places and planning for the extension of
work; in preparing native candidates for the Min
istry, in which Mr. Crummell was chief factor; in
building new and repairing old school-houses; and
in recruiting the ranks of the white staff. The
strain had been too great, and he lived for less than
a year after his consecration as Bishop Payne's
successor in the Episcopate. A few months later,
Bishop Payne also died in his distant American
home.

Thus the Mission was left with only recently
recruited white helpers; but these, with the fine
band of negro clergy, catechists, and teachers, went
steadily and faithfully forward. As Bishop Payne
had so confidently declared, "the mission may be
considered established"; and so it was. For two

45

Wanted - Leaders !

years, with many misfortunes, but always in the
confidence of hope, the work went forward until,
in 1876, the Rev. Charles C. Penick, D. D., was
elected Bishop of Cape Palmas and, on February
13th, 1877, was consecrated in Alexandria, Va,
He arrived in his new field in October, and, two
months later, returned this message to the Church
at home, which sounds discouraging enough: "I
find the American Mission confusion worse con-

•

founded. The work here has been so long without
any head that the disorder is very, very great.
Every building connected with the Mission is tum
bling to pieces. I can put my foot through the rot
ten floor in the room where I now write, and it is
one of the best in the house, and the house as good
as any in the Mission. Books are all moulded and
bug-eaten to worthlessness ; furniture eaten to
honeycomb; records like autumn leaves, only not
so close together; no school system, no educational
system; not the first move towards self-support;
many changes and old questions to be settled, and
not enough clergy to form a court."

I wonder if the Bishop, coming upon an era of
more than usual confusion, was not tempted into a
judgment upon the basis of standards at home
among a people with ten centuries and more of
steadily increasing stability of government and
social order? I wonder if he had not forgotten
that, since Bishop Auer served only an invalided
Episcopate of a few short months, the Mission had
really been headless for a period of quite eight years
— from 1869 to Bishop Penick's arrival in 1877?

46

The Negro in Liberia

What might not have happened in any Diocese in
America, in far more favorable circumstances, had
that Diocese been left without a head for such a
period? And I am quite sure that something like
this happened; for, two years later, the whole tone
of the Bishop's report clearly indicates it, as he
thanks God for the healing of divisions resulting
from lack of Episcopal oversight, and for the bring
ing of good out of the evils incidental to the years
of war, throughout which the Church had saved
many from starvation, slavery and death. "More
scholars than the schools can take are coming from
heathen tribes," he wrote in substance, "and some
are seeing the Christ and following Him." In ad
dition to other activities, Bishop Penick wisely in
troduced a department of farming, both for in
struction and for profit; and the report in 1879
shows its steady advance under the direction of
Mr. Christian Schmidt, a volunteer who came out
with Bishop Penick from America and whose name
suggests a well-trained German farmer. Out of
this enterprise grew one or more agricultural
schools, until eventually, into practically all the
schools of the Mission, most helpful industrial fea
tures were introduced. Doubtless, all should have
begun with industrial training, and the discipline of
hand and eye should properly have led to the train
ing of mind, and upward to that of soul. More
properly all must go together, notably, with primi
tive folk, since each reacts upon the other.

In 1882 the Bishop's health failed, and he was
forced to return to America; and, the next year,

47

Wanted - Leaders !

finding his hope to return groundless, he tendered
his resignation to the Board. Bishop Penick's
noteworthy contribution to the Church and people
of Liberia consisted in the practical industries and
the business system introduced just when these
became possible of a fairly successful adoption. He
was a spiritual power always, as preacher and pas
tor. The statistics, at the close of his Episcopate,
are thus given: 'Total average attendance in the
churches, 1,063; number of communicants, 567;
attendance at Day and Boarding Schools, 392; at
Sunday Schools, 719. Total number of agents
employed, including the Bishop, 8 presbyters, 5
deacons, and others engaged in the Mission staff,
57."

So closes, for the time being, the succession of
Bishops of an alien race in Liberia. Against this
time, God had been preparing a great negro leader
for His Church. After a trying vacancy of three
years in the Liberian Episcopate, the Rev. Samuel
D. Ferguson was elected, in 1884, and consecrated
the following year.

Bishop Ferguson was the second Negro of our
Episcopal Church to be consecrated as Bishop, the
Rt. Rev. Dr. Holley of Haiti being the first. He
was born in Charleston, S. C., on January 1st, 1842;
and, while ill, was baptized by Bishop Gadsden at
the request of his Roman Catholic mother. In
1848, the family moved to Liberia, where the father
and two children soon fell victims to the tropical
fever, leaving the mother and Samuel David to
establish their home in the new land. Bishop

48

The Negro in Liberia

Payne took charge of the boy, put him at school,
and was as a father to him in his formative years
and until he became, first a teacher, then a priest
of the Church. While still a student, he was a
Christian teacher to his less fortunate fellow stu
dents. From one post of responsibility to another
his faithfulness and growth in grace and wisdom
combined to call him. When Bishop Penick arrived,
he quickly singled out Mr. Ferguson, in his business
administration of the Mission, as a fit person to be
the business agent of the Cape Palmas District. He
was for many years the President of the Standing
Committee. The fatality of the climate among the
white missionaries, the growing emphasis put upon
the aim of the Church to grow into a native na
tional Church, the increasing growth in culture and
in grace of the negro clergy, had all conspired to
arouse in the Liberian Church the desire for a
Bishop of their own race, and in the home Church
the willingness to grant it. In the Rev. Samuel
David Ferguson, as the trial proved, the man was
found eminently fitted for the sacred office and the
arduous tasks. After his consecration in Grace
Church, New York, the Bishop visited the home of
his childhood, Charleston, and other points in the
South. His first service as Bishop was in Nor
folk, Va., where he confirmed a class for the Rev.
J. H. M. Pollard in the Church of the Holy Inno
cents — a day of days for the negro brethren of
Norfolk and of America. Another such day was
that on which he was received with glad, loving,
enthusiastic welcome by his own people, the shep-

49

Wanted - Leaders !

herd raised in his own fold — Liberia. All honor to
the devoted white men who, in successive martyr
doms, gave their lives in devoted service to their
black brethren; but is it either ungenerous or
untrue to think, and to write the thought, that from
earth and heaven must have come the glad acclaim
to the black Bishop, blood of his people's blood
and bone of their bone! "Thrice welcome to our
Bishop, thrice honor to God that His grace has
been sufficient for us!"

Bishop Ferguson, while on the voyage to Amer
ica for his consecration mapped out his plans for
development. Among the enterprises projected
were a theological school of high grade, a medical
college for whose conduct native physicians had
been preparing, and an industrial school completing
the design of his predecessors. Upon his return
to Liberia, as Bishop, he was met by immediate and
significant evidence of his people's gratitude for a
Bishop of their own race. Before the year closed,
the King of the Grebos presented himself to the
Bishop for baptism; and later, the king's wife,
thus opening a wide door of future influence for
the Church, though the habit of polygamy tempora
rily deterred many from surrender to the Faith
which forbade it.

Most encouraging was the personal interest of
the President and members of the Cabinet, and of
the mayor of the capital city and most of the offi
cials. E. J. Barclay, Secretary of State, was Su
perintendent of Trinity Sunday School, and others
were active on the vestry or as worshippers.

50

The Negro in Liberia

In 1888, after another journey to the United
States, the Bishop set about establishing a Manual
Labor Farm, for the founding of which Mr. R.
Fulton Cutting of New York, had given $5,000,
with a view to the instruction of boys in industries,
and to serve as a pattern for other similar institu
tions. One hundred acres were bought, and the
site was renamed Cuttington in honor of the
founder. Thus was the Bishop enabled to begin
one of the great enterprises to which he had set his
efforts in his initial plans for development. An
interesting sidelight is thrown on the success of
these enterprises by the Rev. Mr. Fair in describ
ing his work at Bassa. The coffee crop here was
nearly doubled in one year through the use of
improved methods, and the whole crop was sold to
Park and Til ford of New York — a testimony to the
excellence of the sample. Later reports of our Mis
sion farms, though perhaps not so favorable, fully
justified their establishment.

Another stimulating evidence of the new life in
the Mission, is contained in the report of the year
1889: "The native converts are becoming increas
ingly interested in the spread of the Gospel and
evincing a desire for self help" — such is the mes
sage. Church after church set itself the task of
raising as much as possible for the support of the
rector and the meeting of its home charges, while
some also included contributions for the general
work outside their borders. This marks the begin
ning of a new day for the Liberian Church, when
the vision of a mission to others is dawning.

51

Wanted - Leaders !

In 1890, a high recognition of the negro leader
ship of the Church came in the election, by the
authorities of the Republic, of the Rev. G. W. Gib
son as President of the College of Liberia.

It is often stated that the Negro, left to himself,
is liable to moral degeneration. It is interesting,
therefore, to note the high standard of morals
maintained in the Liberian Church under Bishop
Ferguson as shown by the firm discipline with
which, on the rare occasions when it proved neces
sary, he immediately eliminated from the roll of
workers anyone who showed disregard of Christian
standards of morals.

Again, while the missionary zeal of the Liberian
Church was, time and again, thwarted by hostili
ties among the tribes in whose borders mission
work was carried on, there is abundant evidence
that foundations were being laid. Thus when, in
1892, the tribes of the Ca valla region were notified
by the Bishop that disturbances caused by them
necessitated the discontinuance of mission work,
the chiefs, with one accord, begged for a withdrawal
of the notice, and that they be not denied the light
of Christianity.

One of them is quoted : "We are looking to you,
as the people that started leading us to the Great
One, still to continue His message amongst us.
But if you mean to leave us to remain in darkness,
please let us know; for we do not think it right
to seek it elsewhere until we hear and know the
same from you, that you have already given us up.
We close with the following — that we sincerely and

52

The Negro in Liberia

earnestly need the preaching and teaching of the
Word of God amongst us with more force and
spirit than ever in other past times. We are sin
cerely and earnestly yours for whom God's Son

Signed, Teba Yue Hue, King."

Many a white Church might envy such a witness to
its labors.

In the year 1895, the efforts of the Church
toward self-help and national entity had so far pro
gressed as to give birth to a new organization —
"The Board of Directors of the Protestant Epis
copal Church Missionary Society of Liberia, for
the conduct of the Business of God." This organi
zation was effected by the General Convocation
of the Church of Liberia meeting in St. Mark's
Church, Harper, and has continued ever since with
appropriate changes in name and in constitution.

Steadily the native Church grew — the children
of early converts in the ranks, still more of the
grandchildren. From these, the ordained ministry
is now being recruited, teachers prepared, doctors
taught, nurses trained, Christian mothers and fa
thers raised up to be called blessed of their children.
The general level of life is surely and steadily being
raised. It has produced not a few worthy to be
held in memory. Not the least among them, as
earnest of what the race is capable of, was the
Rev. M. P. Keda Valentine, who died on July llth,
1896, and of whom Bishop Penick, his former
Bishop, on hearing of his death, wrote : "He was one
of the foremost spirits who ended the forty years'

53

Wanted - Leaders !

war between two factions of the Grebo tribe. He
was foremost in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, music, ath
letics, courage, markmanship, statesmanship, and
Christian character amongst his fellows. Deeds of
daring, self-sacrifice, patient endurance, forgive
ness, and justness cluster about this man's life as

about few I have ever seen or read of

For six years I was in touch with Keda Valentine
as his Bishop; I, coming from the center of Chris
tian culture and light; he, from the depths of
heathen corruption and superstition; yet I cannot
recall one solitary instance when this man, by word
or deed, fell below the mark of lofty Christian
manhood as we know it. No duty assigned was
ever too hard, no promotion over him ever drew a
word or look of protest, no echo of envy did I ever
hear from his lips. I saw him sit amongst the
kings and sages of his people, where no other young
man had ever sat, and when I asked them why he
was there, they answered, 'True, he is very young,
but God has put plenty of His Book in him, and
he is fit to sit with us and make laws.' Now he is
gone to join the other brave, cultured, true spirits
— Montgomery and Walters — three bright stars in
that dark land's firmament."

Bishop Ferguson died on August 2, 1916, just
one hundred years after the organization of the
American Colonization Society, to which the Li-
berian Republic owes its existence. The Rev. Mr.
Matthews furnishes the statement here quoted
which contains the facts about the District just
prior to the Bishop's death : "When he was made

54

The Negro in Liberia

Bishop, the Church had but ten clergy in the Dis
trict; today we have 26, all colored. Then only
24 lay helpers; now we have 74. Then but 9
day-schools, with 284 pupils; now we have 25
schools with 1,094 pupils. From 5 boarding
schools with 251 scholars, we have now grown to
20, with 596 boarders. The number of Sunday
School scholars has increased over 2,000. The num
ber of stations and churches has increased 150 per
cent, and the communicant list has grown over
2,000. From being, in 1885, absolutely dependent
for support on the home Church, the Liberians, in
1913, contributed nearly $7,000 toward self-sup
port/'

We must not close the story of Bishop Fergu
son's devoted labors without a reference to his rela
tion to the Republic. This relation was unique.
The Bishop grew to be the chief citizen, the "grand
old man" of the Republic. In his quite fifty years
of service as teacher and Bishop, he had trained
many of the rulers and legislators in whose hands
the destiny of Liberia lay. These men knew him as
man, as teacher, as Bishop. They knew his honor,
his love for country and people, his wisdom, his
unselfishness. They trusted him. He was their
adviser. At crucial times he was called to address
and to advise their Congress. The President felt
that in him a wise counsellor was at hand, and he
used him as the Bishop was willing to be used. Well
did the Liberians say of him, with set purpose to
abide by it: "Let us imitate the good example he
has set us."

55

Wanted - Leaders !

Yet still the negro Church of Liberia, while
proving itself capable of developing individual
Christians of high character, did not seem prepared
for full independence. Three years passed, during
which time the matter of the Liberian Episcopate
was discussed in all its bearings. There were
strong arguments in favor of a negro Bishop, pos
sibly with a white Archdeacon as his adviser; but
finally it was deemed best by General Convention to
appoint a white Bishop, and at its meeting in
Detroit in October, 1919, the Rev. Walter J. Overs,
a man of long experience in Africa, was elected
Bishop of Liberia. Consecrated two months later,
he at once left to assume his new duties.

But the Liberian Church was not to be left with
out a native Episcopate. The Rev. T. Momolu
Gardiner, a native of the Vai tribe, and a priest of
high Christian character, had long since given evi
dence of what the Negro can attain to under the
training of the Church. The Liberians themselves
had expressed an eager desire for a Bishop of their
own race, and no one was more fitted to fulfil those
desires than Mr. Gardiner. In October, 1920,
therefore, he was elected by the House of Bishops
as Suffragan Bishop for Liberia, and was con
secrated on June 23d of the following year.

Bishop Gardiner is a native, a fruit of St. John's
School, and of the Divinity School at Cuttington.
In his consecration sermon, Bishop Overs thus
graphically pictures the task to which the new
Bishop is called, and for which God had been pre
paring him: "You and I have travelled through

56

The Negro in Liberia

much of Liberia together. You know the field
and the work. You are a member of the Vai tribe,
one of the most promising tribes of Liberia. But
it is the only tribe of the Republic that is influenced
by Mohammedanism. Your name is Momolu, which
means in English Mohammed. Your father — a
Mohammedan priest — gave you that name, but he
also sent you to a Christian school, to learn letters.
You learned to be a Christian. Gradually you have
come to the position which you now hold. What
a responsibility is yours! You must claim your
tribe for Christ. Just before I left Monrovia, last
month, one of your chiefs, a Mohammedan, came
to me and said. 'The mosque in my town is falling
down; if you will send me a teacher, I will build
a Christian church and school in the very place
where the mosque has stood/ It is prophetic. It
will come. Then there are twenty other tribes in
our District for whom little has been done from
the standpoint of religion, education, or develop
ment in any way. You particularly represent these
people. Your work will not be easy. Nothing
worth while is. The work is vast. The task is
tremendous. But the opportunity is magnificent."

Who can withhold his prayers of deepest sym
pathy for this David of his race, going forth against
the mighty, new-clad in armor still being tried?
Can we fail continually to hold close in our hearts
the white Bishop and the black Bishop, as each
sustaining the other and supplementing the lack of
the other, they cross the borderland of the heathen
and go forward with the Cross.

57

Wanted - Leaders !

We are now in a position to reach some fair con
clusion as to what the Negro is capable of when
placed on his own feet in a more or less favorable
environment. And let it be borne in mind that we
are here dealing with a people of precisely the same
stock as our own negro population.

Apart from what we have considered in these
pages, we may with confidence adduce the state
ments contained in the Report of the Commission
to Liberia, sent out by the Church in 1918. This
report is contained, in full, in the Spirit of Missions
for June, 1918.

The Commission calls attention to the difficulties,
both external and internal, which the negro Re
public has had to face from the very beginning.
Powerful foreign nations on either side of her,
though friendly towards her, have pre-empted much
of her valuable territory for debts incurred, thus
indicating what may yet befall. Poverty and lack
of technical skill have prevented her from discover
ing and developing her own resources, while there
has been no lack of those who would exploit her to
their own selfish advantage. Unavoidable condi
tions, not inherent in the race, have made well-nigh
impossible the establishment of an adequate school
system, without which free institutions must always
be in danger. The Government has had to face
constant internal disturbances due to tribal warfare
often stirred up by self-seeking individuals; hence,
much of her strength, which should have gone to
developing her resources, has been expended in
preserving respect for law and order.

58

The Negro in Liberia

Yet the Commission found the Liberian people
realizing clearly the obstacles to be overcome in self-
development, and calmly and courageously facing
problems which demand for their solution the most
perfect skill, and earnestly endeavoring to overcome
natural obstacles such as only wealth wisely used
can control. "To think what would be the effect
throughout the continent of Africa if, in Liberia,
free institutions were definitely established, is to
make one tingle with enthusiasm. Nor is there any
question but that this is entirely within the ability
of the people if they have the kind of help which
only the Church can render. This can be freely
given without fear of loss to Liberia and without
resulting in dangerous dependence on her part."

A free and stable government has been estab
lished by the Liberians themselves, and it has stood
the test of time and of innumerable obstacles meas
urably overcome. It is an honest government,
Christian at heart and in ideals ; but it lacks knowl
edge and skill and training to realize its ideals. It
has no model to work by. The ability to bear re
sponsibility is the difference between a free man
and a man in bonds, and it is from this kind of
bondage that the Liberian suffers because, with all
the willingness in the world, he has not had the
opportunity to make responsibility count. These
things emphasize the ability and courage and indus
try with which the Republic is facing the obstacles
to her growth.

The Commission reports most hopefully concern
ing the state of the Liberian Church : "With oppor-

59

Wanted - Leaders !

tunity for education such as we, in America,
would hesitate to call opportunity, the Church has
developed a body of clergy who need not be apolo
gized for. With a task that is literally colossal, they
are working at it with a good will and full of hope.
The religious life of the body of the people in the
Church reminds one of the manner of life which
used to prevail in America before America became
rich and sophisticated. In every home where we
have been, family prayers have been a matter of
course, and the reverence with which the household
has taken part has been most refreshing. When we
offered three young girls in the household of the
Chief Justice tickets to a moving-picture show they
thanked us but declined, saying that they were ex
pecting to be confirmed the following Sunday. On
Ash Wednesday, fasting was the rule — apparently
a matter of course."

"The help of Americans will be needed for the
establishment of the Church among the uncivilized.
This is not because of any lack of courage or indus
try or initiative or devotion on the part of the
Liberians. We saw all these graces abundantly
manifested. But these people are shut off from
contacts which would give them the experience and
knowledge necessary for aggressive work. They
know what they lack, but must have help to find
relief." The help we render must be that which
will enable the Church of Liberia to get along with
out our help and to give to the Republic that service
by which the Republic may be established.

60

The Negro in Liberia

"During the past twenty-six years, the Liberians
have had entire control of the Church's work, and
the strength of the Church has been multiplied
many times. No damage has resulted, and no waste
of her meagre funds has occurred."

"The glory of Liberia is that it is a black man's
country — the only black man's country on the face
of the earth. The interests of humanity, as of
Christianity, demand that it remain so. In His
providence, God seems to have laid upon the black
man the task of establishing free institutions in
Africa. The story of Liberia's eighty years is as
thrilling as that of our fathers who, we believe were
sent for a like beneficent purpose to this continent.
The fortitude and courage and patience and en
thusiasm with which those people have devoted
themselves to their task, are beyond praise. The
Republic of Liberia, in spite of malign influence and
slander and misrepresentation, in spite of poverty
which would have broken the spirit of white men,
is an established entity. Let Liberia make good,
and she will have made possible the realization of
the phrase, 'Africa for the Africans.' That Liberia
can do it, would be evident to anyone who has the
wish to see and comprehend the miracle that has
been wrought there."

61

CHAPTER III
THE NEGRO IN HAITI

HPHE earliest instance of a State peopled and gov-
erned under a constitution made by Negroes,
is the Republic of Haiti. For this reason it shares
with Liberia a place of first interest among all the
communities of the world. At its head is a presi
dent, with a parliament of two Chambers, acting
under the revised Constitution of 1889. Republican
in form, the spirit of the Government is French,
since the language and customs are inherited from
the French occupation of the Island. Unfortunately,
however, the country was, for years, ruled by a suc
cession of military despots, each of whom was so
occupied with maintaining his position against rivals
that, even if capable of doing so, he had no time
to develop the rich natural resources of the country
or to establish democratic institutions. The popula
tion has, therefore remained a backward race.

The history of Haiti began with its discovery by
Columbus in 1492. The aborigines were Indians,
but these were enslaved, some sent to Europe, and
the balance gradually exterminated. To take their
places, negro slaves in great numbers were brought
over by the Spaniards at first from Europe, later
from Africa.

Columbus established six flourishing settlements,
including the present capital ; he opened mines, and

63

Wanted - Leaders !

established agriculture. Sugar was introduced, and
ultimately became the chief crop. It is evident that,
from the very outset, slave-labor was used in the
development of this colony; and further, that the
slaves employed in Haiti were brought thither from
Europe. It may, therefore, be of interest to recall
the facts concerning the first establishment of negro
slavery in the western hemisphere. For this, we
must turn back the pages of history to a period
fifty years prior to the discoveries of Columbus.

In 1442, during the reign, in Portugal, of King
Henry, surnamed "The Navigator," Antam Gon-
salvez, returning to Portugal from an African
cruise, brought with him three captive Moors. The
Moors offered to purchase their liberty with negro
slaves if their captors would return them to Africa.
Prince Henry accepted the offer, giving a reason
which served to quiet his own conscience, while sug
gesting a subtle motive which was to justify the
traffic for many a long year to come. It was
"because the Negroes might be converted to the
Faith, which could not be managed with the Moors."
So the trade was made — ten Negroes for three
Moors — to the greater triumph of "the Faith."
They were landed in Portugal in 1442; and, with
in two years, so zealous became the apostles of the
Faith that the "Company of Lagos" was chartered,
others soon following, whose industry included the
traffic in slaves from Africa. Hundreds, yearly,
were brought into Spain and Portugal.

Alfred H. Stone of Dunleith, Mississippi, fur
nishes the facts which we are using, and from which
we quote rather freely:

64

The Negro in Haiti

"In the description of the landing of the first

Negroes we may read the first count in the

indictment against modern slavery, destined to be
repeated ten thousand times in the English-speak
ing world during the 417 years which elapsed be
tween that time and the destruction of slavery in
the southern States: 'But now, for the increase
of their grief (Chronicle of Azurara), came those
who had the charge of the distribution, and they
began to put them apart, one from the other, in
order to equalize the portions; wherefore it was
necessary to part children from parents, husbands
and wives, and brethren from each other. Neither
in the partition of friends and relations was any
law kept, only each fell where the lot took him/ We
are further informed that the Infante was present
to look after the fifth part, which fell to his share,
'considering with great delight the salvation of
those souls which before were lost/ '

n 1501, nine years after the discovery of Amer
ica, the first slaves were transferred from Spain to
the King's Colony of Haiti. At first, only Negroes
Christianized by European life, were sent. This
custom probably persisted until the direct trade be
tween the colonies and Africa was begun, in 1518.
It was then that the good Roman Priest, Las Casas,
desiring to save the Indians from the killing labors
of the mines, advised the direct traffic in slaves with
Africa. Without impugning Las Casas' motives,
it is only fair to add that, in the estimate of the
time, one Negro was equal to about five Indians in
mining-labor. This great value of negro slavery

65

Wanted - Leaders !

as an economic institution is, above all considera
tions, responsible for the enormously increasing
traffic from this date down to the era of abolition.
Such, in brief, is the story of the institution of
slavery in our hemisphere, and especially in Haiti.

Because of the insular life, the great predomi
nance of the Negroes, the almost constant civil strife,
and the slight contact of the races, the conditions
for the maintenance of racial traits and habits were
more favorable in Haiti than anywhere else in
America; hence the development and persistence of
that debasing mixture of magic, superstition, and
secret rites, known as Voodoo, which seems to per
meate all classes of the Haitien population. The
Roman Church, by law established in the Republic
of Haiti since 1869, seems to have failed in eradicat
ing this cult or of reaching helpfully any large pro
portion of the people. This is doubtless due in part
to the difficulties of travel in the interior, and to
the fact that the evils of illiteracy were never suf
ficiently realized to compel any adequate attempt
toward education. The children of the wealthier,
city-bred people have usually been sent to France
to school; the great mass of poorer children entirely
neglected. Inherent laziness served to re-enforce
the ill effects of ignorance among the people at
large, and instability of Government added a fur
ther counter-weight against progress.

Again, the laws of marriage (or the lack of
them) have had a vicious effect upon the Haitien
Negro. Where marriage is not recognized by the
State as legally necessary to the legitimacy of chil-

66

The Negro in Haiti

dren and is therefore rarely observed, polygamy with
all its debasing results is bound to lower the moral
tone of a people, and of the Negro above all. It
is fair to say that, after a century of independence
and self-government prior to American interven
tion, the people of Haiti, kindly and hospitable and
amenable to civilizing influences as they are, gave
little, if any, evidence of progress.

The proverbs of a people, just as their folksongs,
reveal much as to the character, habits and mental
traits. The Spirit of Missions for September, 1875,
records a collection of Haitien Proverbs, from
which these are selected:

It is only the knife that knows the heart of the
yam — used with various meanings — as, for example,
distrust outward appearances, it is not what you
see that counts, and the like.

Shoes alone know if the stockings have holes- —
doubtless a later application of an older proverb,
meaning that only the most intimate know the weak
ness of others.

Conspiracy (or combination) is stronger than
witchcraft — a useful encouragement for minds just
emerging from superstitious fear into the convic
tion that "spirits fear a crowd.''

The wild goat is not cunning that eats at the
foot of the mountain — a comment on the folly of
ignoring points of vantage, and of abandoning
safety for publicity.

// the frog says that the alligator has sore eyes,
believe him — the trustworthy testimony of an un
friendly neighbor.

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Wanted - Leaders !

The ox never says to the pasture, "Thank you"
— a possible implication that it is only a beast which
gives no thanks for favors.

Joke freely with the monkey but don't play with
his tail — an evident warning against outraging the
sensitive feelings of others.

All wood is wood, but mapou (a worthless wood)
is not cedar, meaning that all people are good for
something, but none good for everything.

There are certain qualities of mind and character
which appear plainly in these popular sayings, and
the latter are re-enforced by an old southern pro
verb of doubtful origin which applies to the Haitien,
as to our Southern Negro, however lowly. "If you
burn him for a fool, you will lose your ashes."
Certainly it is a huge mistake to discount the
Negroes' wisdom, no matter how homely and often
rude the expression of it.

We may now return to a consideration of the
history of the Island, pausing only to call attention
to the fact that we are chiefly concerned with the
western third composing the Republic of Haiti.
For here, in contrast to the Dominican Republic,
with its largely mulatto population under the polit
ical domination of whites, we find a population,
ninety per cent of which is pure Negro and with a
negro government. We shall here see the Negro
developing out of slavery in an insular, French
colonial environment.

In 1630, a mixed company of English and French
occupied the Island of Tortuga and became formid
able buccaneers. Obtaining a foothold on the main-

68

The Negro in Haiti

land of Haiti, their decendants became French sub
jects when, by the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, the
part of the Island which they occupied was ceded
to France. A period of strife followed, involving
the whites, the mixed, and the Negroes. As a
result, the whole Island became subject to France.
In 1801, Toussaint L'Ouverture, a Negro of re
markable military genius, successfully renounced
the authority of France and set up the Republic of
Haiti with himself as Governor. Captured by
treachery, he was taken to France where he died in
prison in 1803. The next year, Dessalines became
Governor, massacred the remaining whites, pro
claimed himself Emperor, and was assassinated in
1806. The Spaniards again reappeared about this
time, and gained a footing in the eastern part of
the Island, but, after years of cruel warfare, they
failed to maintain their hold, and the Negro Re
public of Santo Domingo was established in 1844.
More recent events are newspaper history, read and
fairly known by all.

The Island is shared by the two Republics, the
western third being Haitien, the eastern two-thirds
Dominican. The former is French in language, the
latter Spanish. Repudiation of obligations and a
continuous state of disorder finally compelled the
American Government to intervene. In 1915, a
concordat was established with the Government of
Haiti whereby American resident officials were
given certain advisory powers, and iu 1916, the
Dominican Republic was taken in charge by an
American Army of Occupation. Thus the United

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Wanted - Leaders !

States became a virtual protector and guardian of
the peace, serving the whole Island in an educational
and developmental capacity, very much as in the
Philippine Islands.

The political history of the Island of Haiti,
whether in its French or its Spanish aspect, natur
ally led to the early establishment there of the
Roman Catholic Church, and in 1869, it became the
representative of the established religion of the
Haitien Republic. In this Faith the people were
brought up (in so far as they came under any Chris
tian teaching at all). Thus, from the beginning,
the history of the Church in Haiti differs widely
from that in Liberia.

In 1861, an American negro priest — the Rev.
James Theodore Holly — went to Haiti with a com
pany of 110 persons, and there formed the nucleus
of a Mission of the American Episcopal Church.

The early history of this leader of his people is
full of interest as is shown by the following, taken
from Men of Maryland by the Rev. Dr. Bragg of
Baltimore, the historiographer of his race in the
Church.

Born in Maryland, in 1829, young Holly was bap
tized by a Roman Catholic priest from Haiti who
had fled to this country before the fury of the Ne
groes, at that time intent upon ridding their coun
try of the last vestige of the white people. Twelve
years later, he was confirmed by the Archbishop of
Baltimore, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Eccleston, but his con
nection with the Roman Church was not destined
to be permanent. He learned the trade of shoe-

70

The Negro in Haiti

making, working in Washington, and later in
Detroit. Influenced probably by the peculiar cir
cumstances of his Baptism, and by the romance of
the negro Republic battling for self-government,
he seems early to have been possessed with the
desire to offer himself as a helper. This he dis
closed in a letter written, after his desire had been
gratified, from his Haitien home : "I was ordained
deacon in 1855 (by Bishop McCoskry of Michi
gan) with the express understanding that I should
be sent to work in this field. As a matter of fact,
two weeks after my ordination, I set out from
Michigan to New York, from which I was sent ten
days later, by the Foreign Committee of the
Church, to collect information as to the possibility
of establishing such a Mission, and returned from
thence with a favorable report. Six years were
then spent in gaining pastoral experience for the
work in view; and to this end I was advanced to
the priesthood by the Bishop of Connecticut on the
2nd of January, 1856, when I accepted the pastoral
charge of St. Luke's Church, New Haven, in that
Diocese. Aside from the active pastoral work of
that congregation, every fitting occasion was seized
during those six years to stir up an interest by
tongue, pen, and the press, in the contemplated Mis
sion. In 1861, my face was again set towards
Haiti, accompanied by 110 persons (of whom I
was the pastor) for the practical establishment of
the Mission in this land."

Among the most forward in promoting this enter
prise, were the Bishops of Ohio and Connecticut.

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Wanted - Leaders !

It was through the latter's influence, that his Dio
cese generously aided the Mission of Mr. Holly for
sixteen months. At the close of 1862, the Mission
in Haiti was adopted by the American Church Mis
sionary Society, with Bishop Lee, of Delaware, as
Provisional Bishop. The next year, the Bishop
made his first visitation to the new Mission. From
this time forward, the Church at home kept a kindly
oversight over the Mission in Haiti. So faithfully
and successfully did Mr. Holly and his band of
Churchmen work, that, in 1871, the Haitien Church,
by vote of its Convocation, petitioned General Con
vention to elect and consecrate a Bishop for Haiti.
The response was sympathetic, and the petition was
referred to the Board of Missions to ascertain the
best means of securing adequate episcopal super
vision. Three years passed, and the Convention of
1874 entered into a covenant between the Protes
tant Episcopal Church in the United States and
"The Orthodox Apostolic Church" of Haiti. The
following are the more important terms of this
covenant : ( 1 ) That the Church in America recog
nizes the Church in Haiti as of right and of fact a
foreign Church under the definition of our Consti
tution; and that, with this recognition, the assur
ance is given that the Church in Haiti will enjoy
the nursing care of the Church at home until such
care shall no longer be needed. (2) That the
Church will designate and consecrate one of the
Haitien clergy to be Bishop of Haiti. (3) That a
Commission of four American Bishops will be
named to act with the Bishop of Haiti as a Board

72

The Negro in Haiti

of Administration, to extend the Episcopate when
needed, and to administer discipline pertaining to
the episcopal order. (4) That the Church in Haiti
agrees to guard, in all their essentials, a conform
ity to the doctrines, worship and discipline of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States,
departing from them only as local circumstances
require. (5) That the Haitien Church agrees to
concede to the Church at home the designation and
consecration of the Bishops of the Church in Haiti
until three Bishops shall have been established
therein.

In accordance with this agreement, General Con
vention, in 1874, elected, from among the clergy of
Haiti, the Rev. James Theodore Holly, and, on
Nov. 8th, in Grace Church, New York, he was con
secrated as Bishop.

Eager to be back at work, Bishop Holly set sail
ten days later, and thus describes the glad, joyous
reception of his people upon his arrival at his home
and old parish, Port-au-Prince: "I found all the
members of my family and of Holy Trinity on the
lookout for me. A deputation of the clergy and of
the vestry were in waiting with a carriage. I was
conducted to the church where the faithful had
gathered for a thanksgiving service, entering under
the triumphal arch surmounted by the phrase,
'Gloria in excelsis Deo/ which had hastily been
constructed that morning, after the steamer had
been seen at a distance entering the harbor. The
service over in church, I retired to my residence,
where I was besieged during the rest of the day

73

Wanted - Leaders !

by visits of the members of the congregation, from
neighbors, friends, and the citizens in general, all
coming to welcome me home, and to present me
their warm congratulations. These visits were
continued in like manner all the next day. Saturday
morning I called on the President of the Republic,
and the Minister of Public Worship, to pay my
respects, and thus rendered to the civil authorities
the honor due to them before appearing to officiate
in public in my new vocation. Mr. Preston, the
Minister Plenipotentiary to Haiti, had made an
official report to the Government of my consecra
tion as Bishop, at which he assisted in Grace
Church, New York, and the President and Minister
expressed to me their highest gratification at the
new position thus gained by our Church in Haiti.
Advent Sunday, I addressed the English congrega
tion after Morning Prayer at six o'clock, and the
French congregation at the 9 o'clock service, taking,
on each occasion, for my text, those words of
Zechariah iv. 6, 'Not by might, nor by power, but
by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.' The drift
of my remarks, in setting forth all the circum
stances leading to and attending my consecration to
the Haitien Episcopate, was to impress on the
minds of the people committed to my charge that
human instruments and worldly powers were of no
value in this matter, but that the movements of
God's Holy Spirit were the basis of all our suc
cesses in the past as they must be of our hope in
the future."

The Negro in Haiti

Thus began the Episcopate of the first negro
Bishop of the American Church, a man of unusual
ability; of highly developed powers of leadership;
a courteous, Christian gentleman.

The statistics for 1875 are: The Bishop; priests,
6; deacons, 4; lay-readers, 14; candidates for
Orders, 3; number of missions, 18; of churches,
3; of rectories, 2; whole number of souls, 751;
of communicants, 238, and perhaps 3 schools.

The Bishop's early letters supply information
concerning the nature of the field. Transportation
was difficult with only paths or trails to guide the
traveler. All of the travel by land was done on
horseback, and the Bishop was gradually accumu
lating the means of locomotion. On December 24,
1874, he writes, "I have already bought a moun
tain saddle (to be paid for when convenient to me)
and have yet to get bridle and knapsack. However
I borrow these things, with the use of a horse, to
make my trip tomorrow" — a comfortable, leisurely
approach to equipment, with the blessing of handy
friends by the way.

Other travel was by boat, very leisurely too, a
week to come and go if the places be near, and more
if they be far. The Bishop is already longing for
a "Bishop's Horse," and says so; a "Bishop's
Boat" is probably as yet only a dream, because
"the interior stations are among the most interest
ing in which we are engaged, and work ought to
be encouraged and strengthened by the visits, as
often as possible, of the missionary-in-chief."

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Wanted - Leaders !

The Bishop's travels were wonderfully fruitful
• — large classes confirmed, and glad response given
to the ministrations of their new, but already
beloved, Father in God. The schools, too, were
filled with boys and girls in training for the new
day of the Church in their homeland. But church-
buildings were lacking, and many of the congre
gations were worshipping in rented or private
houses.

In Port-au-Prince, the capital, the Church was
firmly established and included two parishes where
services were constantly held in English as well as
in French; but the poverty of the people was a
drawback to independence. The Bishop writes,
"We have from three to four hundred souls to look
after in this way at the Haitien Capital; but the
most of them are in unfortunate or very moderate
circumstances, and therefore can do but little to
sustain the Gospel among themselves. They must
not be expected to keep up, without generous aid
from abroad, the work of the Gospel in Haiti. The
time may come when the great mass of men of the
so-called better classes, who now live in complete
religious indifference, shall be awakened to a sense
of their great spiritual danger. Here, as else
where since the beginning, it is the common people
who follow Him gladly."

For their shepherding, the Bishop felt the need
of more men from the American Church, conse
crated to the Master's Mission. There were men
already at his disposal, but the means to employ
them were lacking. Here again, as so consistently

76

The Negro in Haiti

in our mission-fields, because of the poor, cramped
purse, the Bishop — sent to organize and to evange
lize — was estopped within hearing of yearning calls
for preachers and teachers. "I need to found at
once a Theological Training School for young men
desirous of preparing themselves for the Ministry,
and a first class female Boarding School," the lat
ter, to supply his schools with teachers. How like
the cry of Ferguson in Liberia is this urgent appeal
of Holly in Haiti, and how natural the cry of each !

By the close of the first year of the Bishop's
episcopate, he had completed the round of visita
tions of his rather disconnected group of missions.
The year had been a very successful one, yet not
without its distresses and difficulties. There had
been 106 confirmed, 36 baptised, and schools well
filled with children. Property had been repaired,
and at least one church-lot donated for the new
parish of St. Andre, in Trianon. This was given
by General Hyacinth Michel, who was appointed
lay-reader of the new parish.

We have lingered about the opening scenes of the
Bishop's first year that we might gain an insight
into his plans and methods, and realize something
of his difficulties and successes.

During the early years, the Bishop is evidently
intent upon the great purpose which consistently
faced him — the creating of a national Haitien
Church. After five years, his report to General
Convention in 1880, tells us how earnestly he has
been striving, more to strengthen the faith and
character of the little parishes, than to extend faster

77

Wanted - Leaders !

than such faith and character can be established.
The statistics show but a feeble increase in the
numerical strength. "Nevertheless," writes the
Bishop, "there has been, during this period, that
which figures cannot show, viz., an increase among
its numbers of the knowledge of the ways of the
Church, greater attachment to the same, and a
decided deepening of their inner spiritual life. Our
Church in Haiti also occupies the high vantage-
ground of being the only denomination exercising
independent local jurisdiction and aspiring to a
complete national organization. In pursuance of
this object, this feeble Church has now twice as
many native ordained clergymen as all the other
religious bodies combined. It has also more
advanced stations than any of them, established in
the interior country districts among the rural pop
ulation, where the heathen customs of Africa have
hitherto prevailed. Our work has conquered the
esteem and respect of the Government and people
of Haiti, and enjoys the full protection of the
authorities under the guaranties of the Constitution
and laws of the country."

It is probably because of this conservative and
cautious policy of Church extension, and still more
because of the poverty of the people and the small
amount available for clerical salaries, that we find
no appreciable increase in the number of clergy and
other workers. For the Bishop, in 1883, reiterates
the statement, "we have no difficulty in finding the
needed laborers ; not only can we find them among
ourselves in Haiti, but, in case of need, the whole

78

The Negro in Haiti

of the British West Indies are at our beck and call,
islands where the Church and Church training insti
tutions have long been established. Therefore the
only difficult problem that remains to be solved is
that of supplying the money necessary to inaugurate
the central training institution that we propose to
establish." Such an institution, it will be remem
bered the Bishop had had in mind from the very
beginning.

Passing rapidly over the intervening years to
1895, the story reminds one of the more tragic
record of the foundation-period in Liberia. There
were successive angry waves of warfare, involving
the Church through her people and property; and
the sometimes surly, sometimes lethargic, aspects of
peace, which in turn follow family outbreaks. There
were rebellions against the ruling powers ; and fre
quent changes among the officials upon whose stable
protection the Bishop, in earlier years, had grounded
so much of his hope. There were the severe losses
of people, and the death of pastors and teachers,
bringing burdens upon the Bishop's aging shoul
ders. But through it, he battled bravely onward,
filling the ranks as the communicants fell away, and
slowly, very slowly adding to them; supplying the
leaders as these passed on, and very slowly increas
ing their number.

In 1891 The Twenty- fifth Convocation of the
Haitien Church (being the seventeenth of the
Bishop's episcopate) organized itself into a Mis
sionary Society, of which each member of the
Church was declared a member. The Convocation

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Wanted - Leaders !

itself became the Board, while the Bishop and other
officers formed the Executive Committee. The
churches were growing in the spirit of self-help.
The people of a mountain section, poor in worldly
goods, earned the money for, and built the walls of,
their church; and the President of the Republic
gave $650 to supply the roof. The church at Port-
au-Prince, destroyed some years before and hin
dered in its plans for rebuilding by various obsta
cles, was settled in a better location through the
good offices of the President and Parliament. These
are samples of the problems, some perplexing, still
others stubborn, which delayed and harassed the
workers. A year of peace (and there were not
many) witnessed "some steps taken in advance for
the further extension of our Gospel work. Three
new stations (in 1890) for the preaching of the
life-giving Word have been occupied." One of
these was initiated by a small band in the mountain
region, who, gathered into the Church and know
ing the blessing, desired to spread the Gospel to
their unconverted neighbors.

In 1891 the Bishop records, with pride, the fact
that one of his presbyters, the Rev. Shadrach Kerr,
had been transferred to the Diocese of Florida. Mr.
Kerr, while still canonically attached to Haiti, had
been temporarily at work on the Isthmus of Pan
ama, under Archbishop Nuttall of Jamaica. An
other of the Haitien clergy had been transferred to
Jamaica. Thus the products of the Church in Haiti
were being spread abroad.

80

The Negro in Haiti

A farm-school for education and demonstration,
established about 1887, and requiring three years of
instruction for graduation, sent out its first class in
1890. One of the young men at once established a
school in a needy mountain district. Thus was
demonstrated the quality of these negro Church
men.

The year brought much sickness, however; and
amongst the victims was the young teacher, who
had already begun the work of a missionary to his
people. It was doubtless this visitation which con
stituted a call to the Bishop to hasten the establish
ment of a Medical Mission, so greatly needed, and
which had already been his earnest wish. Two stu
dents had been sent to Boston, to be trained, one as
a physician, and the other as a pharmacist. The
Bishop sent an urgent appeal for sufficient money
to establish these men in their professions upon
their approaching graduation.

The year 1892 — the fourth centenary of the dis
covery of America — was a memorable one in the
annals of their history. "Here," wrote the Bishop,
"the first permanent settlement of Europeans in
the New World was made. Here, later on, the first
landing of African slaves in this hemisphere was
effected. Here, following the example of the United
States, the second colonial yoke of European vas
salage was broken, and the second free and inde
pendent nation of the New World thereby estab
lished."

"This people," continues the Bishop, "by the
powers of the merely natural man, have indeed con-

81

Wanted - Leaders !

quered their earthly freedom, but they still have
need to obtain the emancipation of the soul — free
dom from sin — by that liberty wherewith Christ
only can make us free."

The plea of the Bishop rings out — his plea for
help to realize his well-founded plan which again
and again he had described to the Board of Mis
sions, and which follows the eloquent and urgent
presentation of the claims of Haiti just quoted.

"For upward of thirty years, since it was planted
here in 1861, we have stoutly held on to the almost
forlorn hope of making this Church a blessing to
the people among whom our lot is cast. Among
other things for which we labor, we are striving to
complete the well-being of their acquired national
ity by raising up a native clergy among the people,
bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh — a most
desirable object, the accomplishment of which no
other religious denomination, aside from ours, has
essayed to realize in a systematic manner. To this
end, we need a theological training-school. We are
also wrestling with the problem of extending popu
lar education among the illiterate masses; to do
which, more successfully, a better equipped normal
school is needed. We also have in hand for solu
tion, the problem of introducing scientific medical
treatment of the sick and neglected poor; to do this
effectually, we need a well-organized medical mis
sion. We have the personnel (doubtless the two
students referred to above) for such a mission, but
we need the pecuniary means necessary to effect
such an organization."

82

The Negro in Haiti

Surely this plan should have found friends and
helpers in America, and must find them even yet,
in order that Haiti may realize a more worthy
measure of the ideal of her first devoted Bishop.
He closes his report thus : "On our part, we ask
you brethren, one and all, to pray for us that our
faith fail not, and that we may not grow weary in
well doing, but be always animated with the blessed
and soul-consoling hope, that in due season we shall
reap, if we faint not." In 1895, after seven years
of weary but persistent patience, the Bishop was
able to hold services in the church at Port-au-
Prince, the center of the mission work of the Dis
trict, which was so far completed as to be fit for
occupancy. The same year he was able to announce
the joyful tidings that "five of the sons of our clergy
have been graduated as physicians to co-operate
with the clergy in the work of the Gospel among
the afflicted poor; and thereby emphasis has been
given to the humane aspect of the Gospel of Christ,
while the ministry of the clergy gives due emphasis
to its divine aspect. We have every reason to be
lieve that our triple Gospel ' work, carried on by
ministers, physicians and teachers, has given us a
grasp on the very vitals of the nation, which will
grow with its growth, and increase with its
strength."

But the Bishop is not deceived by the fresh hope
which the year has brought. "Let it be borne in
mind," he writes, "that our work is carried on under
the enervating influence of the Tropics, and amidst
the sluggishness of an undeveloped people; and,

83

Wanted - Leaders !

therefore, such marvels of rapid progress are not
to be looked for here as characterize the railroad
speed with which things more forward in the
United States under far more favorable circum
stances."

During the next ten years, the first steps were
taken towards the realization of the most important
features of the plans for the District. In 1901, fol
lowing Bishop Holly's visit to the States, the much
needed Theological School was opened at Port-au-
Prince, with the Rev. P. E. Jones as Dean, and the
Revs. Alexander Battiste and Theodore F. Holly as
professors. Dean Jones had, for many years, been
the very efficient Principal of one of the Schools of
the Republic at Aquin, and his experience and suc
cess had singled him out as the man to reorganize
the Lancastrian School, needing reconstruction, in
the capital city. His transfer by the Government
made it possible for the Bishop to realize at least
the beginnings of the Theological School, so long
a cherished hope. At first this school was conducted
in the evenings, after the example of the Govern
ment Law School. Six students were enrolled at
once, and others awaited the means necessary for
expenses. This school, or its successor, has been
reopened by The Rev. A. R. Llwyd, and three new
clergymen recently graduated.

The Medical Mission, so important to the devel
opment of the Bishop's plans, began to take definite
form about 1904, through the training of two
nurses in an institution extemporized for that pur
pose by Dr. A. C. C. Holly, a son of the Bishop.

84

The Negro in Haiti

In 1905 two lots were secured for the projected
hospital and dispensary, for the erection of which
funds were asked of friends in the States. Await
ing these, Dr. Holly opened a small hospital in one
of the mission-buildings, with Miss Lidia Boisson,
one of the nurses trained locally, in charge of the
sick ward. Two other young women had been sent
to the United States for training as nurses, at the
expense of the Board of Missions. The ministra
tions of the hospital and the ministries of the physi
cians and nurses wrought untold blessings to a
country to which sanitation was unknown and
hygiene unheard of. The well-laid plans of the
Bishop and his co-workers, the physicians, were
never completed; for, with the coming of the
Americans, in 1915, all sanitary and medical work
was taken over by them, and the necessarily im
perfect equipment and methods of the old medical
mission were thereby superseded.

In the face of the infirmities of greatly advanced
age, Bishop Holly continued to administer the dif
ficult work of the District until March 1911, when
he was called to his rest. Through fifty years of
devoted, unfaltering service he gave himself to the
land of his adoption, and the people whom he loved.
In 1855, he had sought the permission of our
American Episcopal Church to found the Church in
Haiti. In 1861, the petition granted, he landed
with a colony of American Negroes in Haiti. Dur
ing the succeeding years -he raised up a native min
istry — a notable achievement in view of the fact
that the Roman Church, with a far longer history

85

Wanted - Leaders !

of missionary work in Haiti, has, to this day, not a
single native priest there. During the first years'
services in the capital were said in both French and
English; at the close of the Bishop's Episcopate,
there were but five English-speaking communi
cants recorded.

When the Rev. Mr. Holly arrived in 1861, Haiti,
except for a few Church members in the new col
ony, was barren ground for the Church. In 1874
the Bishop and his staff of six priests and four dea
cons were ministering to nearly one thousand souls,
of whom 238 were communicants, divided among
18 missions.

At the close of Bishop Holly's administration,
there were 12 priests; 2 deacons; 2 candidates; 2
postulants; 18 lay-readers; 54 teachers (of whom
9 were in day-schools) ; and 26 missions. More
than 2,000 souls were under the ministrations of
clergy and teachers, with 651 communicants.

The National Convocation of the Haitien Church,
following the Bishop's death, requested the Church
in America to send a delegation to Haiti to look
over the field and counsel with the native Church as
to the measures to be adopted which would best
serve its interests. Meanwhile, the Rev. Pierre E.
Jones, Dean of the Convocation, administered the
District pending the decision of our American
Church. Mr. Jones gives the following most sig
nificant information: "Only a strongly organized,
national, Protestant Episcopal Church can surely
bring about a revolution in the religious views and
opinions of our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens.

86

The Negro in Haiti

The English Wesleyans entered Haiti in 1818, and
have today four Missions, two native ministers and
one foreign. The American Methodists entered the
field in 1824, and have today one mission and one
foreign minister. The American Baptists entered
the field in 1848, and have today three native min
isters and three missions. The Protestant Epis
copal Church entered the field in 1861 ; it became an
autonomous Church in 1874; and has today fifteen
well-organized parishes, seven mission stations, and
fifteen ordained native ministers. We have also a
young Haitien in the Divinity School in Phila
delphia, and a young woman in the Deaconess
House in the same city. After their courses are
completed, they will return home to strengthen our
little army of brave ones."

In January, 1912, the Board of Missions re
quested the Rt. Rev. Dr. Knight, Bishop of Cuba,
to be the chairman of the delegation in response
to the above request. The Bishop, with his party,
arrived at Port-au-Prince about the close of the
month, and later sent an interesting account of the
expedition, which was published in The Spirit of
Missions for September and October 1912. As a
sidelight on the difficulties which had beset the
path of Bishop Holly, this extract from Bishop
Knight's letter is illuminating. Referring to Port-
au-Prince he says, "There is a saying that it has
been burned and rebuilt every seven years as a
result of frequent revolutions." And then, as an
earnest, let us devoutly hope, of what may come to
pass, this sketch is given of the newly elected Pres-

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Wanted - Leaders !

ident Le Conte. "It was some time before I under
stood that this gentle and soft-spoken Negro was
the chief executive of this turbulent black republic.
There was nothing uncouth about him; he had no
braggadocio manners; on the contrary, he seemed
refined and effeminate. It was hard to realize that
only a few months before he had landed on his
native shores, after five years of exile; had gath
ered a few followers; and had swept his course
onward to the Capital, until the martial Simon fled
before him. With his advent to power, better days
for Haiti seem to have dawned. Le Conte belongs
to one of the oldest and most refined families of
the Island. He is grandson of the first President,
the military genius who, taking up the sword of
Toussaint, completed the deliverance of Haiti from
France. He has been highly educated, and has
spent much time abroad. He has come to power
when militarism has ridden his country for many
years, and crushed out its industries. He is revers
ing these things. The number (of the army) has
been reduced. The new broom is sweeping clean.
Our Church can be a great aid at this time if she
rises to the opportunity."

Bishop Knight met and advised with the Coun
cil of the Haitien Church, called in special session.
The action taken is thus described : "The Convoca
tion remained in session for a week; and, finally,
by a practically unanimous vote, passed a resolu
tion requesting the American Church to receive the
Haitien Church as a Missionary District." One can
but regret, and deeply, that the purpose of Bishop

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The Negro in Haiti

Holly's fifty years of vision, which seemed so great
to him, should have been abandoned, when the Con
vocation voted to relinquish its autonomy. Let us
hope that this is but a temporary status.

It was not until 1913 that General Convention
could reply to the request of the Church in Haiti,
and meantime Bishop Knight was deputed to render
episcopal service there. In that year General Con
vention, having elected the Rev. Charles B. Colmore
as Bishop of Porto Rico, appointed him to the
charge of the Missionary District of Haiti. The
connection between Porto Rico and Haiti is exceed
ingly remote, and the means of transportation most
difficult, so that Bishop Colmore found a task im
possible to be done efficiently. Like a good soldier,
he obeyed orders, and the Church must take all
the onus for the short-comings. He holds the Dis
trict together, promoting the existing enterprises,
and greatly encouraging the work of the Woman's
Auxiliary, of which little or no notice seems previ
ously to have been taken. To overcome, as far as
possible, the disadvantages of the conditions, the
Rev. A. R. Llwyd was appointed commissary to
the Bishop, and, in 1918, he began work in this
capacity. With headquarters in Port-au-Prince,
Mr. Llwyd has indefatigably labored to repair rents
and build up waste places.

The reports, as well as the comments of visitors,
all agree that what is most needed for the upbuild
ing of the people is the Christian Industrial School.
This was Bishop Holly's dream ; it must still be the
objective until realized.

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Wanted - Leaders !

In 1919, General Convention resolved that Haiti
must have a negro Bishop of its own, and elected
the Rev. Samuel Grice of Payne Divinity School.
He felt constrained to decline, and the Rt. Rev. Dr.
Morris, of the Panama Canal Zone, was appointed
to take the oversight of the Church in Haiti. At
best, an absentee Episcopate can do little more than
conserve, and Haiti awaits the day when love and
generosity shall overflow in the American Church,
so that she may fully seize the day of opportunity.
It is her chance to do for the struggling Church of
the Haitiens what our American representatives,
civil and military, are doing for their Government,
— settle and establish and train, and thus in good
time set free a people from the thraldom of igno
rance and vice. It is doubtful if either can succeed
without the other; it is pretty certain that social
training must fail unless religious culture accom
pany it. "Except the Lord build the house, their
labor is but lost that build it."

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CHAPTER IV

THE SLAVE AND THE FREEDMAN IN
AMERICA

importation of Negroes to the American
mainland began about 1525, following the
license for such traffic by Philip of Spain. From
that time, through Spanish and French companies
chiefly; and after the Spanish Armada, through
English companies chiefly, the trade in African
slaves was vigorously pursued. While statistics are
unreliable, Stone approves the guess that "the num
ber transported to Spanish America may be said to
have been somewhere between four and seven mil
lions; for English America, insular and continental,
about three millions during the century preceding
the Revolution. The number brought into the Thir
teen Colonies may have been about three hundred
thousand.

The first slaves (about twenty in number) were
brought to our colonies by a Dutch vessel which
landed at Portsmouth, Va., in 1619, just twelve
years after the first permanent settlement by the
English. This we have upon the authority of John
Rolfe. Thus the Negroes, though not of their own
wills, were among the first settlers of the new
country. It is vain to discuss the question of re
sponsibility, or of moral culpability. However, re
volting to the modern mind and heart, slavery was

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the inheritance of our forefathers, practiced in
every conceivable form, not only in Africa, but
among every people and in every land. When prac
ticed within racial lines, it extended all the way
from the kindly, household slave relations of the
Romans, where slaves were sometimes the teachers
of their masters' children, to the relations with war-
trophies to be sold or exploited as chattels. When
practiced inter-racially, the differences of race were
apt to harden into prejudice with its general in
difference to the consequences of cruelty. But in
either case, it was the universal practice of heathen
and Christian peoples until a comparatively recent
time. Moral culpability did not enter into the
reckoning of the ages preceding ours, and respon
sibility was readily admitted or never questioned.
And this was true of our colonist forefathers who
carried on the slave traffic as sellers and buyers in
the early days. Even after the consciousness of
the wrong of it had been awakened in many by
the experiences of slavery, they found themselves
the victims of a system of social life which they
would gladly have escaped. This is equally true
of the southern and the northern colonists.

It was because of the rapid growth of this con
sciousness of the wrong of slavery, naturally quick
ened by the advance of Democracy during the
eighteenth century, that the traffic was made illegal
in 1807. It was also because so large and so re
spectable a number of slaveholders realized them
selves to be the victims of an inherited system of
social life from which they could find no satis-

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

factory means of escape, that the system took more
and more the form of humane feudalism in which,
however, the vassals were workers and not sol
diers to be protected and not exposed to danger.
And when Emancipation came, there were not a
few who felt and expressed it. "It is not the Ne
groes who are emancipated, but the Whites; only
we cannot realize it until the last of our old people
are gone." And this was true, for the Negro had
yet to learn the art of freedom and acquire its
character before it could become the reality as well
as the blessing it should be. True, too, that the
white man was not yet emancipated, for he had
still to fulfil the obligation to his old people, many
of them children as yet in development, loving and
beloved ; and this, in many cases, he did to the last
dollar and to the last dust of meal, and to the last
old servant laid to rest.

No one, except perhaps the political economist
here or there, or some fond soul of the olden time
who has been asleep ever since, will attempt to de
fend slavery; yet it is also difficult to understand
the philosopher, North or South, White or Negro
who attaches nothing but obloquy to it, and sees
nothing that is good resulting from it. Doctor
Murphy's opening chapter of The Basis of Ascen
dency begins with this true assertion: "It is so
frequently assumed that the most significant factor
in the history of our negro population is the factor
of its exploitation, that a word of contradiction is
never quite out of place. Within its actual environ
ment, whether North or South, this population has

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suffered much, but it has received more." And
emphasizing the inevitable co-partnership of the two
races in the task of progress which the White alone
has been responsible for forming, he adds: "It
(the negro population) has become involved so in
extricably in the fate of a far more efficient social
group, that the conditions of progress within this
stronger group have become the conditions which
must surround and advance the life and fortunes
of the weaker."

Dr. Booker T. Washington is never an apologist
for negro slavery, but he recognizes a large fact
when he sees, side by side with "the great curse
(of slavery) to both races," this evident shaping of
its ends. "God, for two hundred and fifty years,
in my opinion, prepared the way for the redemp
tion of the Negro through industrial development."
It is the story of this redemption that must now
occupy our interest.

Our first chapter sought to draw the picture of
the Negro in Africa. We then saw him as he has
developed under conditions of more or less segrega
tion and self-government. Now we are to trace his
development under American conditions, described
by visiting students of slavery as the most kindly
and humane ever experienced in such relations.
Thus the Englishman, Welby, wrote in 1820:
"After traveling through three Slave States, I am
obliged to go back to the theory to raise any ab
horrence of it. Not once during the journey did I
witness an instance of cruel treatment, nor could I
discover anything to excite commiseration in the

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

faces or gait of the people of color. They walk,
talk, and appear, at least, as independent as their
masters; in animal spirits they have greatly the
advantage."

Again, Basil Hall wrote, in 1828: "I have no
wish, God knows! to defend slavery in the ab
stract; .... but .... nothing during my re
cent journey gave me more satisfaction than the
conclusion to which I was gradually brought that
the planters of the Southern States of America,
generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage
their estates with the least possible severity. I do
not say that undue severity is nowhere exercised;
but the discipline taken upon the average, as far as
I could learn, is not more strict than is necessary
for the maintenance of a proper degree of author
ity, without which the whole framework of society
in that quarter would be blown to atoms."

Human nature is much the same the world over,
and this display of kindly humanitarianism, so
noticeable to the traveling students, was probably
but the outgrowth of the early conditions of co
lonial life. The settlers in a new land were beset
with the problem of labor to develop the new home
steads. English freemen would rarely engage
themselves for such wages as employers could
afford to pay. What more natural than that the
laborers in England, willing and often anxious to
emigrate to the new land, should sell themselves
for a period of labor sufficient to pay passage, in
cluding a meagre wage while the servitude lasted.
Thus indentured servitude for the Colonies took

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the place of the old system of apprenticeship so
long in use in the Old Country.

When negro slaves came in increasing numbers,
the former relation with indentured servants must
certainly have entered, more or less, into the inter
pretation of the relations of permanent servitude.
Add to this that all alike were surrounded with the
possible, and often aroused enmity of the Red Men,
and with a constant peril of life, we have factors
which must greatly have strengthened and softened
the bond between White and Negro. In these and
in many other conditions of the earlier days of the
settlements, one sees the conditions out of which
kindliness and affection were well-nigh certain to
grow, and the well-recognized mutual partnership
of interests to develop.

And this is just what actually happened for the
most part. The growing sense of the mutual in
terest and dependence, and responsibility constantly
tended to develop a relationship similar to that of
the old patriarchate. The constant battle with the
primeval forest and undeveloped new lands — a
battle to be waged successfully only by the importa
tion of laborers, untaught and undisciplined — con
stantly tended also to develop the relation of the
teacher and the taught in the larger School of Na
ture. So the system grew into the Family and the
Trade School.

Let us dismiss, with one paragraph, that other un
sightly, often cruel, always condemnable side of
slavery — the unfeeling, ruthlessly selfish and con
temptible business of the slave-trader, who sought

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

only to fill his purse with gold through the sale of
"human cattle" — that unspeakably loathsome esti
mate of the Negro as an animal whose relationships
were ignored, whose love was ridiculed, whose sen
sibilities were despised and whose rights (for the
rights were there, even though the rights of a slave)
were denied. Slavery did, in some instances, present
that aspect; but no one can read the story without
knowing that that side was the horrid incident, and
not the characteristic of the old feudal and patriar
chal life. It was that feature which often hindered
the development, upon the best lines, of the rude
Negroes brought from Africa. It could not, how
ever, stop it. Our purpose being to trace this
development, we are led into pleasanter fields ; for it
is in the inner life of the White-Black family and
school, that the story of the culture of the wild
graft is written.

Professor Phillips, in his American Negro Sla
very, tells us that during the first half century after
the introduction of slaves there were comparatively
few Negroes in the colony — Virginia — which re
ceived the first importations. "They had," he
writes, "by far the best opportunity which any of
their race had been given in America, to learn the
white man's ways and to adjust the lines of their
bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Their
importation was, for the time, on but an experi
mental scale, and even their legal status was, during
the early decades, indefinite."

There was, as yet, neither law nor custom estab
lishing slavery as an institution. In fact it was

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custom that established the status of permanent
servitude, while the laws only recognized it in de
fining the difference between the white indentured
servant and the negro purchased slave. This did
not become a subject of legal enactment until 1662.
Prior to that time, Negroes were described as ser
vants : "A few as servants for terms of years ; some
were conceded, property rights of a sort incompat
ible with the institution of slavery as elaborated in
later times. Some of the blacks were liberated by
the courts, as having served the terms fixed by
their indentures or by the custom of the country."
How much of trouble and distress would have been
saved had the forefathers developed their slave
problems after this precedent, rather than after
that of their Spanish and English neighbors of the
South Atlantic Islands!

Some of the Negroes had become landowners by
the middle of the century, and some were them
selves slave owners. More and more, however, the
owners of Negroes were holding them tenaciously,
and regarding them as salable property; and from,
1680 onward, the laws for slave control became as
definite as those in the Islands.

The charter and later settlement of the South
Carolina Colony, in 1663, by Sir John Colleton of
Barbadoes and his company, for the purpose of
attracting colonists from the English Islands, fixed
the general legal status of slavery upon the Amer
ican Colonies. This was made the more sure be
cause in the first-settled coast regions of the col
ony, rice, and later indigo, were introduced as the

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

staple crops, for the cultivation of which only Ne
groes could endure the necessary swampy condi
tions. The owners, dwelling in the neighboring
pine elevations by night and in summer, went to
their plantations only in the day time and in the
winter season.

Likewise, in the Northern Colonies, without ex
ception, the system found its way; first, through
the enslaving of captive Indians, then, by 1630, of
Negroes also. While the traffic in slaves persisted
for a long time with Newport as the chief center,
neither climatic nor economic conditions were
favorable to the system. In one way or another,
slavery declined, and the field presents little that
is valuable to our study.

The Revolutionary War, with the Declaration of
Independence, and its assertion of the freedom and
equality of men as its justifying principle and mo
tive, produced a profound effect upon the mind of
America ; not, indeed, sufficiently great to enable any
State to enact laws looking to gradual emancipa
tion, but great enough to arouse most of the North
ern States and all of the Southern, except Georgia,
to prohibit, by the year 1787, the further importa
tion of slaves from beyond their borders. The
Federal Congress was still, however, inhibited for
twenty years, from enacting such laws.

The action of the State tended to stabilize social
life, by reducing the number of strange Negroes
from across the ocean; and to strengthen the ties
of masters and servants, by prolonged association.
The result was well-nigh universal in the Slave

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Wanted - Leaders !

States in spite of South Carolina's repeal of its law,
four years before the Federal Act was passed at the
close of 1807. Meanwhile the introduction of cot
ton, in about 1790 as the chief crop of these States,
proved to be the greatest material factor in deter
mining the social and industrial life of the Eastern
and Southern States, especially the latter. Once
firmly established, following Whitney's invention
of the cotton gin in 1793, it almost as firmly estab
lished the life of the Negro in his agricultural home.

The Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, and the expan
sion of sugar-planting on a large scale, completed,
for many generations, the cycle of Southern agri
cultural industry. Since then, much has happened;
but agriculturally the Negro's home is practically
unchanged and his development has been through
a stable school of arts which ministered to his rural
life.

The pupils, we must bear in mind, came from
many tribes of Africans. Professor John Mc-
Crady, in the course of a lecture to his students in
Sewanee, said that he had clearly defined fourteen
different dialects spoken by the Negroes of the Sea
Islands of South Carolina, and did not doubt but
that many more could be found by the student of
the Southern Negro. Not only were the dialects
different, but quite marked were the physical and
mental characteristics. It is a mistake to imagine
that all Negroes are alike. The pupils of the planta
tion school came to be known and rated personally
just as the pupils of any school must be; and so,
too, the children of the large patriarchal family.

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

The character of the plantation school was deter
mined, partly by the crops raised, partly by the
nature of the land, partly by the personality of the
master and his foreman, partly by the number of
workers, and partly by the neighborhood customs.
Some neighborhoods operated on the gang system,
dividing the workers into groups ; others on the task
system, allotting so much as the labor of the day;
while still others used successfully both systems,
often the former for men, the latter for women and
younger learners.

If the owner had but one or half a dozen families
of servants he usually labored with them at plough,
or hoe, or wagon. If a greater number, his time
was fully occupied in planning the work, and over
seeing the workers. If the plantations were very
large, the organization was elaborate and complete.
In every case, to the Negro, as he came new from
his African home and for long after, the school
was most valuable and every day brought lessons
to body, mind and soul. As the great majority of
the old servants were congregated on the larger
plantations, it was there that most of the training
was received. Should the reader have access to
one of a number of books like A Southern Planter,
by Mrs. S. D. Smedes, the reading will be most
delightful and not less instructive in its exact picture
of the old regime. Or if a visit could be paid to
Alfred Holt Stone's Dunleith Plantation (a very
fine sample of many like it) in Washington County,
Mississippi, there would be seen a perfect likeness
of the old life, under the much improved condi-

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Wanted - Leaders !

tions (in many respects) of free labor. For all
that was best in the old regime, the mutual interest,
the personal attachments, the mutual confidence, the
pride in home, the loyalty and friendship between,
master and servant, has been preserved in the
descendants of both. The statement just made and
that which follows have been tested all over the
South, and never found wanting whenever the two
races are still found in the old homes. There never
has been a place or time when there were more
Christian Whites and Christian Negroes more earn
estly interested in forming and keeping the highest
and best race-relations, and in seeking the best in
terests of both races alike, than in the South at this
present time. Unfortunately, they are not all Chris
tians who call the name of Christ.

The organization of a large plantation had to be
very perfect if it was to succeed in maintaining its
great family. Phillips' American Slavery presents
many samples and, with minute detail, describes the
routine, interesting but not necessary to our study.
One type will sufficiently illustrate the educative
value of all.

The division into crafts was essential where the
plantation represented a community well-nigh com
pletely self-sustaining. There was the agricultural
department, so ordered as to provide the right pro
portion of plowmen and hoe-hands, each with its
foreman. In every case the foreman or head-man
was a Negro of marked ability as a workman and
leader, who was not a mere driver but a teacher.
Generally he exacted the task and demanded that

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

it be well done. Often he got what he wanted by
tactful resource and consummate human wisdom,
as one of them expressed it, "I never discouraged,
but him that was hindmost I praised the most."
His leadership involved every detail, both of prompt
and well-done service, and of the care of the tools;
in the case of the plowman, the proper care of the
livestock and its management. There were the
carpenter shops, where all the wood-work was done ;
with the house carpenter, sometimes the cabinet
maker, and always the toolmaker for the wood-work
of plows, wagons, etc. Often, in the beginning, they
had been taught by white experts fresh from their
apprenticeships in England or Ireland. They under
stood the care and seasoning of timbers and lumber,
from the cutting in the forest to the sawing and
shaping in the shop. Under them there were often
one or more young apprentices who had shown
aptitude. The system, the exactness, the care
ful planning that no want should be unsupplied
when needed; the care to be ready for instant re
pairs that other departments might not be delayed
— all of this was entrusted to the head of each
department of carpentry, who was a man to be
trusted and relied upon ; and the master, with mind
always busy looking forward and eyes seeing every
thing, knew it, as in kindly confidential contact, he
rather suggested and counselled than ordered. Here
is a little extract from a colloquy once heard in a
very busy time.

"Uncle Ned, where are those plow stocks ? Didn't
I tell you we would need them tomorrow"?

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Wanted - Leaders !

"Marse John, who is making dese plows ? Don't
I know when dey is needed"?

And with a chuckle, Marse John receives the re
tort of offended dignity, and beats a retreat, having
seen the various parts of the plows, stacked in order,
ready to be assembled in a trifle of time, and proud
of the old reliable.

There was the blacksmith's shop, where every
thing was made, from a nail to a lock and key, from
a plow-shovel to a wagon-axle and spindle, from a
bridle-pit to steel stirrups. Gradually these were
replaced by manufactured articles; but to the last,
any might be repaired or replaced if necessity re
quired.

The women had their tasks. There were the
hoe-hands — women, boys, and girls — to be taught
under easy, short tasks, but with the care always
required by their foreman. There was the weave-
room, where cotton and wool were spun and woven
into cloth for home use. The dyeing was done at
home. There was the sewing-room where, under
the oversight of the mistress, clothing in proper
quantity was cut and made for "top and bottom"
wear. There was the day nursery where the young
mothers, busied with the half tasks allotted them,
left their little ones under the care of the older
experienced women who, under the mistress, were
at times nurses, and at other times mid-wives.

Some plantations also had "the sick house" for
severe cases; but, in most cases, the sick were at
home, visited regularly by master or mistress or
both, and by the family doctor where his attention

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

was needed. The last was often distant, and the
master and mistress were generally good substi
tutes, always supplied with simple remedies. The
day-nursery provided the opportunity for instruc
tion in baby-farming, which many a mistress used
to great advantage. For instruction in domestic
service, the "Big House" was the school, and none
better. A southern negro boy would as soon have
been disrespectful to his father as "sassed" the dig
nified butler; a punishment would even more cer
tainly have followed the latter, if known. And the
relation of love between children and "Mammy,"
and between family and servants, is too charmingly
commonplace to remark.

Dr. Washington, writing of God's hand in it all,
says : "First, He made the southern white man do
business with the Negro for 250 years in a way
that no one else has done business with him. If a
southern white man wanted a house or a bridge
built, he consulted a negro mechanic about the plan
and the actual building of the house or bridge. If
he wanted a suit of clothes or a pair of shoes made,
it was to the negro tailor or shoemaker that he
talked. Secondly, every large plantation in the South
was, in a limited way, an industrial school. On
these plantations, there were scores of young col
ored men and women who were constantly being
trained, not only as common farmers, but as carpen
ters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, plasterers, brick-
masons, engineers, bridge-builders, cooks, dress
makers, housekeepers, etc. I would be the last to
apologize for the curse of slavery ; but I am simply

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Wanted - Leaders !

stating facts. This training was crude and was
given for selfish purposes; and did not answer the
highest needs, because there was the absence of
brain-training in connection with that of the hand."

It is good to have the Negro speak for himself.
The last sentence would have been written differ
ently by his white friend. Though given for self
ish purposes in part, the training was definitely also
for the good of the pupil; and while often crude,
it was more often very definitely expert. Some of
the more skilled workers, in every generation of the
slavery days and in spite of adverse laws, were
taught to read and cipher ; they drew their plans,
estimated their materials, and made their own cal
culations for the work in hand. Yet it is also true
that the laws against school-training, though never
fully obeyed, vastly hindered the general develop
ment of the race.

One other important division of farm economics
should be mentioned, i. e., the food supply, involving
the raising of cattle, hogs and poultry; the cure of
meats ; the storage of grain and vegetables, etc. In
all this there were plantation experts, as well as
happy joyous faces and overfed bodies at "hog-
killin' times." In practically all cases, Saturday was
half-holiday, often utilized by the slaves in their
home-gardens or in other work yielding money to
be spent at their own pleasure. Poultry and eggs,
the weaving of baskets or other articles, were other
sources of income. Not infrequently the Negroes
continued the crafts native to their tribes in Africa.

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

The houses of the servants, while far beyond
those left behind in the "Dark Continent," and com
fortable for the most part, were certainly not the
sort in which a high moral life could be taught.
Consisting often of only two rooms, sometimes
three, the problem of sleeping-quarters in them
seemed a secondary consideration. And while few
planters of the olden days would admit less than a
real interest in the morals of their servants, practi
cally none provided the means of safeguarding
them properly in the homes furnished. Yet it
must be said that these quarters were generally bet
ter than those which the Negroes have provided for
themselves "since freedom."

We turn now to the old plantation as the patriar
chal family, with its valuable educative features
in moral training and home-making. "The Big
House" was the name given by the Negroes to the
master's home, whether a log house or a stately
mansion. The servants' quarters on the large plan
tation were often in the form of a village, with its
streets, one or many, as the inhabitants required.
Each house had its garden, its "hen-house," and
generally its pig-sty; with its fruit trees, serving
both for shade and for food. Other features of the
village, the day nursery, etc. — have been mentioned.
The system of life was co-operative. With the ex
ception of the garden truck, the supplies came from
the plantation storehouses and the flocks and herds.
Fish from the nearby streams, wild game, and
native fruits of field and forest, furnished additional
food for all alike.

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Wanted - Leaders !

"The lives of Whites and Blacks," as Professor
Phillips writes, "were partly segregate, partly
intertwined. If any special links were needed, the
children supplied them. The white ones, hardly
knowing their mothers from their 'mammies' or
their uncles by blood from their 'uncles' by cour
tesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the cabins ;
and the black ones were their playmates in the
shaded, sunny yard, the livelong day. Together
they were regaled with folklore in the quarters;
with the Bible and fairy stories in the "Big House" ;
with pastry in the kitchen ; with grapes at the scup-
pernong vineyard ; with melons at the spring-house ;
and with peaches in the orchard. The half -grown
boys were likewise as undiscriminating among
themselves as the dogs with which they chased rab
bits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when
the fork in the road of life was reached, the white
youths found something to envy in the freedom of
their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of
shoes, and the freedom of their minds from the re
straints of school. With the approach of maturity,
came routine and responsibility for the whites ; rou
tine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of
the males of each race grew into ruffians, others
into gentlemen in the literal sense; some of the
females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen ; but
most of both races and sexes merely became plain,
wholesome folk of a somewhat distinctive planta
tion type.

In amusements there was the same mingling and
separation. Never a fox-hunt or a rabbit-chase,

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

but some bell-voiced Negroes were on hand to
"whoop-up the dogs/' and, with canny knowledge
of the habits of wild things, to guide the hunters,
dogs and humans, to likely lairs. Something like
this was true of every outdoor sport. If the Ne
groes gave a dance, the White were there to
look on and applaud. If there was a festivity at
the "Big House," there were sure to be some fa
vorites from the quarters to see and help. Who, that
has heard them, can ever forget the impromptu
concerts swelling up from the quarters on moon
light nights? Starting often with a single voice
from the stoop of a cabin, and traveling from house
to house, until the combined voices swelled upward
and outward as a great, exquisite organ filling all
space — it was, in very truth, a human organ of
God's fashioning. The memory brings melody.

Every step by the way was development from the
savagery, often cannibalism, of African inheritance,
to the awakening kindliness due to others, and the
reverence for life as such. There were quarreling
and fighting to be prevented or stopped. Punish
ment was often inflicted for such outbreaks. In
some cases, the masters resorted to athletics as both
a training in self-control and a means of working
off surplus energy. Wrestling, boxing, racing and
the like were practiced under the eye of the master,
who acted as judge of the contest, and knew how
to teach the contestants to compose ruffled feelings.
Whether at work or at play, the old system was a
school of training, under average conditions worth
while ; under the best conditions most valuable.

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Wanted - Leaders !

Some of the tribes of Africa had already devel
oped agriculture to a degree. The American life
immeasurably improved both method and purpose.
And what a wholly new conception of family and
social life was born in them ! Polygamy had been
too universally fashionable in the old land to admit
the ties of family. No fondling there of little ones,
no rejoicing in the growing lives ; only the interest
in the chattel, to be sold if the child be a girl, if a
boy, all ties gone with the mother's dried breast.

But, in the new life, love, long starved, re-awak
ened in tremendous force. High human emotions
were developed, released and expanded under ever
increasing kindly relations, growing more and more
into affectionate attachment which was tried by shot
and shell, by hunger and thirst, and not found
wanting. This a South Carolinian wrote in 1852,
a few years before the testing time of war : "Expe
rience and observation fully satisfy me that the
first law of slavery is that of kindness from master
to slave. With that .... slavery becomes
a family relation, next, in its attachments, to that of
parent and child." The Negro did not write that —
not many could — ; but nearly all learned to live it.

Conditions differing from those of the Negro in
slavery existed, even during the period of slavery,
among a constantly growing number of free Ne
groes who formed a distinct class both North and
South. While a very few free Negroes came into
the colonies from the Islands, and. in the early
period, a larger number at the expiration of the
indentured service, this class was formed either by

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

the purchase of themselves by the Negroes, or
through their manumission by generous or grateful
masters. Typical of the first, is "the deed signed
by Robert Daniell of South Carolina, in 1759,
granting freedom to his slave, David Wilson, in
consideration of his faithful service, and of £600
currency in hand paid." Illustrative of the second,
is "the will of Thomas Stanford of New Jersey, in
1722, directing that, upon the death of the testa
tor's wife, his negro man should have his freedom
if, in the opinion of three neighbors named, he had
behaved well."

It is to be noted, too, that the democratic philoso
phy of the Revolutionary period, inevitably and im
mediately producing the abolition movement, stim
ulated very greatly private manumissions through
out the colonies, which persisted, in spite of reac
tion, to the very end of slavery. Thus Philip
Graham, of Maryland, made a deed in 1787, by
which his slaves were converted into servants for
terms, and in which he recited, as the reason, his
conviction that "the holding of his fellowmen in
bondage and slavery is repugnant to the golden law
of God and the inalienable right of mankind, as
well as to every principle of the late glorious revo
lution which has taken place in America." About
the same time, Richard Randolph, of the Roanoke
family, wrote to his guardian, "With regard to the
division of the estate, I want only to say that I
want not a single Negro for other purpose than his
immediate liberation. I consider every individual
thus unshackled as the source of future generations,

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Wanted - Leaders !

not to say nations, of freemen ; and I shudder when
I think that so insignificant an animal as I am is
invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."
So many were the manumissions of which these
are typical, that, by 1790, there were more than
35,000 freedmen in the South. And while the rea
sons assigned were changed in the Nineteenth Cen
tury, liberations on a large scale were made. A
unique sample was that of John McDonogh, the
most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, who
made a bargain with his whole force of slaves,
about 1825, by which they were collectively to earn
their freedom and their passage to Liberia by their
overtime work on Saturday afternoons. This labor
was to be done in McDonogh's own service, and he
was to keep account of their earnings. They were
entitled to draw upon this fund upon approved
occasions; but, since the contract was with the
whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied
for cash, the others must draw theirs pro rata,
thereby postponing the common day of liberation.
Any 'slaves violating the rules of good conduct were
to be sold by the master, whereupon their accrued
earnings would revert to the fund of the rest. The
plan was carried to completion on schedule; and,
after some delay in embarkation, they left America
in 1842, some eighty in number, with their late
master's benediction. In concluding his public nar
ration, McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed
for Liberia, the land of their fathers. I can say
with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more
virtuous people does not exist in any country."

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

There were also not a few families of Virginia
and South Carolina who, though not without diffi
culties, colonized their Negroes in Ohio, and them
selves, in some cases, began life afresh as pioneers
in a new country.

Sometimes the liberations were attended with
romance, as, when Pierre Chastang, of Mobile, was
bought and freed by popular subscription in recog
nition of public services in the war of 1812 and in
the yellow fever epidemic of 1819. Another out
standing figure was Sam whose freedom was
bought in reward for his saving the State Capitol
from burning, the Georgia Legislature providing
$1800 by a special act for this purpose. Negroes
freed for meritorious service, and those buying their
own freedom, became ensamples of substantial
worth to the free population.

Among these freedmen there were some notable
figures who, for one cause or another, were highly
esteemed in the locality in which they lived. Just
two examples must suffice. "In Georgia, the most
notable was Austin Dabney, who, as a mulatto
youth, served in the revolutionary army and
attached himself ever after to the white family who
saved his life when he was wounded in battle. The
Georgia legislature, by special act, gave him a farm ;
he was welcomed in the tavern circle of chatting
lawyers whenever his favorite, Judge Dooly, held
court in his home village; and once, when the for
mality of drawing his pension carried him to Sa
vannah, the Governor of the State, seeing him pass,
invited him as a guest in his house.

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Wanted - Leaders !

In 1792, a Negro named Caesar, noted for his
knowledge of curative herbs, was liberated by pur
chase, the Assembly of South Carolina voting the
funds and, in addition, an annuity for life.

Thus, by purchase, manumission and natural
growth, the 35,000 free Negroes of 1790 grew to
approximately a half million in 1860 — about equally
divided between the North and the South. The
chief concentration was in the border States, the
number rapidly decreasing with increasing dis
tance from the middle line. The climate and the
industrial repression in the far North were alike
unwholesome to this class; and the suspicion and
stringent laws in the far South about as much so.
In both cases the Whites had the upper hand, and
in both cases they used their power after their own
wills.

The lot of the freedmen was, indeed, a difficult
one to bear. The philosophy of the Negro, and the
habit of association, were certainly chief elements
in the preservation of peace to a remarkable degree.
The well-to-do had their property at stake; the
large majority of day laborers, the unprosperous
and inert, were satisfied simply to be free. It was
the smaller class, within the class, who represented
the progressive freedmen, the forerunners and
prophets of the after-war leaders and seers of the
race. For these forerunners had already, in their
day, entered every large field of endeavor which
engages the race of today.

Among the Churches, in the North, with few ex
ceptions, the freedman was driven to form his own

114

The Slave and the Freedman in America

organizations; while, in the South, he was encour
aged to adopt the churches of the Whites; indeed,
in the South, few separate churches were provided
by any denominations.

Among the fraternal organizations, he had none
in the South in common with the Whites; while, in
the North, the Masons and Odd Fellows were intro
duced, the latter through a negro initiate who had
been received in England. This most natural and
important feature of negro social life was, for the
most part, supplied by their own secret societies.
These were very numerous all over the land, as
they are at this day. It is quite impossible to get
accurately at the history of these societies, so
screened in secrecy. A mere glimpse may be had
of their purpose through the published notes on
the "Union Band Society of New Orleans," 1860.
Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace," its officers
were of both sexes. Members were pledged to obey
the laws of the Lodge, and its officers were pledged
to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with its
members, to visit one another and the sick, to report
illnesses of members, and to wear the regalia when
required. The Official Mother was required to
assign nurses for the sick who were looked after in
every detail. Funeral expenses and the burial, in
minute detail, were provided for. (We may note,
parenthetically, that, while secret societies are the
rule in every African tribe, it is doubtful if these
had more than a remote connection with the socie
ties in America.)

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Wanted - Leaders !

In the public schools, the negro freedmen were
little regarded. In the North, generally, they were
debarred from the white schools, and poorly pro
vided with schools of their own; in the South,
after 1840, education was discouraged, and, in most
communities, forbidden.

The Fugitive-Slave Law bred great irregularity
and injustice to the freedmen. The occasion was
thus made for kidnapping the free Negroes, trans
porting them to distant regions where identification
would be difficult, and the subsequent sale of the
captives or their involuntary servitude. Societies
were established, here and there, to prevent these
heartrending tragedies. All the States had laws
against it, and practically no failure to convict is
recorded when the offender was brought to judg
ment. But the crime was so comparatively easy,
that the wonder is, that the freedmen increased so
steadily and normally.

An interesting phase of the life of the freedman
is illustrated by the census of urban workers. The
United States Census of 1850 gives, in parallel col
umns, the occupations of free colored labor, above
15 years of age, in New York and New Orleans,
respectively. In the former there were 3,337, and
in the latter 1,792. New York had 4 lawyers and
3 druggists, New Orleans none ; the ministers were
21 to 1; the physicians, 9 to 4; merchants, 3 to
64; jewelers, 3 to 5; clerks, 7 to 61; teachers, 8
to 12. New Orleans also had 4 capitalists, 2 plant
ers, 1 1 overseers, 9 grocers, and 2 collectors, while
New York had none of these. New York had three

116

The Slave and the Freedman in America

times as many barbers as New Orleans, and twice as
many butchers; but, while New Orleans had 355
carpenters, New York had only 12, and no masons
as against 278 for New Orleans. A like proportion
was shown in all the skilled trades.

In New York, one-third of the freedmen were
unskilled laborers; while, in New Orleans, barely
a tenth were of this class. This was due to the
greater discrimination against colored labor in the
North, which was true then as now. The laws in
various Northern States excluded free immigrants,
and discriminated against those who were already
in their borders. In industrial life, they were very
generally excluded from the trades. On the other
hand, in the South, while the laws were even more
severe, they were interpreted far more leniently,
and the practice of the Whites was more kindly,
with the result revealed in the Census quoted.

In view of the difficult condition of the freedman,
it is remarkable that so few accepted the invita
tions, so widely given, to emigrate to other and free
lands. The Colonization Society offered facilities
to move to Liberia, beginning with 1819; the Hai-
tien Government offered special inducement in 1824
and again in 1859, even promising free transporta
tion and free lands to the French-speaking Negroes
of Louisiana. In 1840, an Immigration Society
offered free transportation to British Guiana. But
few availed themselves of these opportunities, pre
ferring the ills they suffered, along with very gen
eral security and prosperity to those they knew not
of in the distant lands.

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Wanted - Leaders !

It is also remarkable that so few real uprisings
against the white slave-holders should have
occurred. These were generally led by the freed-
men, and many are reported; but, in most cases,
the reports were much like the flaring headlines of a
modern newspaper, and must be attributed to the
nervous dread of such possibilities. This, more
than the few real happenings, led to the enactment
of stringent laws; but the generally harmonious
life was rewarded with very lax execution of such
laws. In truth, the proportion of slave-holding,
free Negroes in some localities, such as New Or
leans and Charleston, too nearly approached that of
the white slave-holders, to warrant a persistent sus
picion of danger. In spite of all these difficulties,
a few free Negroes of note, both men and women,
appear in every generation.

Dr. James Derham, born a slave in Philadelphia
in 1762, became the slave of a physician in New
Orleans, who trained and used him as an assistant.
He bought his freedom, and became the first recog
nized negro physician of whom there is record.
"Dr. Benjamin Rush," says the Negro Year Book,
"the celebrated physician, published an account of
Derham and spoke in the highest terms of his char
acter and skill as a physician."

Dr. Kelly Miller tells us that "the first real impe
tus to bring free Negroes in considerable numbers
into the professional world, came from the Ameri
can Colonization Society which, in the early years,
flourished in the South, as well as in the North .
. . . and undertook to prepare professional

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The Slave and the Freedman in America

leaders of their race for the1 Liberian Colony." The
Society began its work about 1817, and sent teach
ers, trained in the South and the North alike, to
the Colony established shortly after. Among these
teachers were Doctors Taylor, Fleet, and DeGrasse.

A century earlier, Benjamin Banneker, born in
Baltimore in 1731, was the first man in America to
make a clock which struck the hours.

Phyllis Wheatley, born in Africa, and brought
to Boston where she was sold to John Wheatley,
and educated, wrote verses which were highly
endorsed. They were published in London, and
covered a variety of topics, religious and moral
chiefly. To these names of Negroes who attained
distinction, should be added that of Daniel A.
Payne, of Baltimore, the founder of Union Semi
nary (consolidated in 1863 with Wilber force Uni
versity), who became a Bishop of the African
Methodist Church. Others will appear in our study
of the religious development of the race.

Commercially, the freedmen were not without
conspicuous examples of thrift and material suc
cess. There was "John Jones, the colored proprie
tor of a popular hotel in Charleston, who lived in
the same manner as his white patrons, accumulated
property to the value of some $40,000, and main
tained a reputation for high business integrity and
talent." Others there were among the free people
of that city, respected and prosperous, with consid
erable establishments served by slaves. In New
Orleans, a still larger number of wealthy colored
people lived. Thorny Lafon, a merchant and money

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Wanted - Leaders !

lender, was distinguished both for his wealth and
philanthropy. He died about 30 years ago at the
age of 82, leaving an estate valued at nearly half
a million, from which many charities benefited. Un
fortunately, wealth and good repute are not indis-
solubly united anywhere or among any people; it
is therefore pleasant to recall them wedded in the
person of a Negro.

Many of the freedmen were gifted in small
trades, and even when laws were passed excluding
them from populous slave-areas, petitions were
common requesting that worthy ones might be per
mitted to remain. On the seaboard, boating and
fishing provided, on a small scale, both a profitable
and a free life for many. A few cases of large
slave and land-holding appear, particularly in Lou
isiana. Cyprian Ricard bought at Sheriff's Sale, in
1851, an estate in Iberville Parish, at a cost of
nearly a quarter of a million dollars. "Marie
Metoyer, of Nachitoches Parish, had fifty-eight
slaves, and more than two thousand acres of land
when she died in 1840.'' There were others in
Louisiana, as well as in South Carolina, Virginia
and Maryland.

These conditions among the freedmen as well as
the patriarchal system on the plantations had their
results in the development of the race.

Along with, and under the tuition of, the pioneers
of America, the Negro cleared the forests, drained
the swamps, subdued the wild lands, built the homes
and absorbed the civilization of the older race
which he served. Here, as always, service of others

120

The Slave and the Freedman in America

was the highest service of self; for, conscious or
otherwise, all service has its reaction upon the
servers. What the older races got, through the long,
weary, successive preparations of the ages of stone
and wood and iron; of slave and feudal and chiv-
alric and democratic eras ; that, in contact with the
highest form of which America was capable, the
ablest and most diligent among the Negroes got
through their amazing capacity for absorption and
adaptability. To those who know the Negro best,
this capacity for adaptation and absorption is still
unbelievable; while to those who know him re
motely, it is a miracle, unexplained or miscon
strued. To the former — his white friends of the
South through three centuries of intimate associa
tion — the difficulty is to understand what their
eyes behold — a child-race of seventy years ago
already producing leaders who stand among their
people as clear, true ensigns of their race. To the
latter — the man who knows the Negro more re
motely — the miracle is explained only upon the
assumption that the Negro is a Caucasian in black
and not what God made him — a Negro — with his
own racial characteristics, able to absorb what is
best in the world, to build it unto himself and to
stand before his Master and before mankind in
God and self -fashioned black manhood.

The scientific professions have been entered by
ever-increasing numbers and by increasingly better-
trained men; by women, too, though in smaller
numbers. Doctors, lawyers, inventors, chemists,
scholars, editors, some worthy to rank high in their

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Wanted - Leaders !

professions, and some known on both sides of the
ocean, are at once the pride of their race, and the
ministers to its many needs.

There were tribes in Africa, which produced men
of decided artistic talent, untrained. They are rep
resented here in the coterie of worthy sculptors and
painters. All were musicians, rude doubtless in
their native haunts, but always plaintive. These,
too, are here, everywhere softened and sweetened
in a gentler atmosphere, and in highest culture pro
ducing a black Patti, a Fish Quartette, and others
of like gifts. It may not be to the credit of com
poser or player, but the fashionable (and abomina
ble) rag-time music is their gift to the world. In
poetry, Paul Lawrence Dunbar is universally read
and sung, and there are many others almost as
worthy. In fiction, a morning paper of December
14, 1921, announces the winner of the prize of the
Gincourt Academy, Paris, as Rene Moran, a negro
novelist of the Island of Martinique. America, in
spite of blots, here and there, has been kind to the
Negro, has given him a chance, has helped him to
embrace it, has taught him much, and learned
somewhat from him.

122

CHAPTER V

THE PERIOD OF WAR AND RECON
STRUCTION

\Y7"E have seen the results of the patriarchal sys-
** tern under which the Negro lived in America
during the slave era. Then, with the four long
years of war, followed by the eleven (in one State
fifteen) long, weary years of Reconstruction, came
the day of testing of the results of the carefully
built up family and trade-school training.

Regarding the war-period and the result of its
testing, White and Negro alike agree. No one is
better qualified to speak of it than the one Negro
who knew, and who, more than any man of his
day, is entitled to the credit and the honor of fash
ioning out of the past a new and greatly better
era for his people and his country, Dr. Booker T.
Washington.

He writes : "The self-control which the Negro
exhibited during the war marks, it seems to me,
one of the most important chapters in the history
of the race. Notwithstanding that he knew his
master was away from home fighting a battle
which, if successful, would result in his continued
enslavement, yet he worked faithfully for the sup
port of his master's family. If the Negro had
yielded to the temptation and suggestion to use the
torch or dagger in an attempt to destroy his mas-

123

.Wanted - Leaders !

ter's property or family, the result would have been
that the war would have been quickly ended; for
the master would have returned from the battle
field to protect and defend his property and family.
But the Negro, to the last, was faithful to the trust
that had been thrust upon him, and during the four
years of war, there is not a single instance recorded
where he attempted in any way to outrage the fam
ily or to injure his master's property."

His white friends have said as much. Thomas
Nelson Page writes : "It is to the eternal credit of
the Whites and of the Negroes that, during the
four years of war, when the white men of the
South were absent in the field, they could entrust
their wives, their children, all they possessed, to the
care and guardianship of their slaves with absolute
confidence in their fidelity." And again: "They
raised the crop that fed the Confederate Army, and
suffered without complaint the privations which
came alike to White and Black."

Those who experienced it all solemnly and sa
credly acknowledge the debt of gratitude to that
generation of negro servants which they as sa
credly bequeathed to their posterity. Said a father
to his son, thirty-four years after emancipation, as
death was closing his eyes, "Son, see that my old
black people are cared for." This was his sole
dying injunction.

But what is the significance of the testing of
War? It meant that Africans who, in their native
land, had acknowledged no obligation to anybody
outside of tribal ties, whose habit of life had been

124

The Period of War and Reconstruction

constant warfare with all else, had been trans
formed by new family ties which embraced, im
loyal fidelity, White and Black alike. It meant that
savage people, who had owned no sense of respon
sibility save that which protected personal life and
furthered personal wishes, had been so wonderfully
tutored as to expand that sense of responsibility
into a loyalty of trust that is little short of miracu
lous. A war whose issue was the Negro's freedom,
could not break that bond of trust. So far, in the
character of its product — both White and Negro —
the old family and trade-school had been tested,
and the examination had been passed. When the
War closed, the old friendship was as strong as
ever, and the mutual relation closer than ever. In
most cases, their freedom was first announced to
their former slaves by the old masters; and both
together set about the establishment of the new
relations with hearty good will and the united
desire "to re-build our homes."

Then came the Reconstruction Period, with its
testing of a very different nature. Here again, let
us hear what the Negro has to say, and learn from
himself his response. Dr. Washington writes : "At
the close of the War, both the southern white man
and the Negro found themselves in the midst of
poverty. The ex-master returned from the war to
find his slave-property gone, his farms and other
industries in a state of collapse, and the whole in
dustrial and economic system, upon which he had
depended for years, entirely disorganized.

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Wanted - Leaders !

As we review, calmly and dispassionately, the
period of reconstruction, we must use a great deal
of sympathy and generosity. The weak point, to
my mind, in the reconstruction era was that no
strong force was brought to bear in the direction
of preparing the Negro to become an intelligent,
reliable citizen and voter. The main effort seemed
to have been in the direction of controlling his vote
for the time being, regardless of future interests. I
hardly believe that any race of people, with similar
preparation and similar surroundings, would have
acted more wisely than, or very differently from,
the way the Negro acted during the period of re
construction .... I do not believe that the
Negro was so much at fault for entering so largely
into politics, and for the mistakes that were made
in too many cases, as were the unscrupulous white
leaders who got the Negro's confidence, and con
trolled his vote, to further their own ends, regard
less, in many cases, of the permanent welfare of the
Negro. I have always considered it unfortunate
that the southern white man did not make more
effort during the period of reconstruction to get the
confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and thus
have been able to keep him in close touch and sym
pathy in politics .... What the Negro
wants, and what the country wants to do, is to take
advantage of all the lessons that were taught during
the days of reconstruction, and apply these lessons
bravely and honestly in laying the foundation upon
which the Negro can stand in the future, and make
himself a useful, honorable and desirable citizen,

126

The Period of War and Reconstruction

whether he has his new residence in the North, the
South, or the West."

The description is true. The white friend would
have written this one sentence differently — "I have
always considered it unfortunate that the Southern
white man did not make more effort — to get the
confidence of the Negro . . . ." The misfor
tune was, that the old southern friends were not
permitted to retain the confidence of their old Ne
gro friends who were estranged and filled with sus
picion by the same "unscrupulous white leaders
who got the Negro's confidence — to further their
own ends." Time and time again, during this era,
far-seeing Southerners, sometimes against the vig
orous protest of their neighbors, offered small
farms to their old servants at very low prices, which
would provide homes of self-respect and stem the
tide of temptation to wander and to idle about. Not
a few accepted the advice of their old and best
friends; but the new toy of ownership was too
alluring. In nearly all cases the feeling of wealth
in possession bred spendthrift habits and the early
loss of the farms.

But our purpose is not to trace the story of re
construction. This has been amply told by South
erners — Thomas Nelson Page and others; and by
Northerners — Carl Schurz, Rhodes and others. Our
purpose is to note the result of this testing-time
upon the pupils trained in the old plantation trade-
school.

Again the answer is given by Dr. Washington,
whose testimony is substantially that of his race of

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Wanted - Leaders !

that generation. "This business contact with the
southern white man, and the industrial training
received on the plantations, put the Negro, at the
close of the war, into possession of all the common
and skilled labor of the South. For nearly twenty
years after the war, except in one or two cases, the
value of the industrial training given by the Ne
groes' former masters on the plantations and else
where was overlooked. Negro men and women
were educated in literature, mathematics and the
sciences, with no thought of what had taken place
on these plantations for two and one half centu
ries. After twenty years, those who were trained
as mechanics, etc., during slavery, began to disap
pear by death ; and gradually we awoke to the fact
that we had no one to take their places. We had
scores of young men learned in Greek; but few in
carpentry, or mechanical or architectural drawing.
We had trained many in Latin ; but almost none as
engineers, bridge-builders, and machinists. Num
bers were taken from the farm and educated, but
were educated in everything else except agriculture.
Hence they had no sympathy with farm life, and
did not return to it."

The real fact is, that, as a result of the recon
struction policies, quite fifteen years were well nigh
lost in the development of the Negro. For what is
the value of tuition in Greek and Latin and the finer
arts, for a few of the brighter minds — so few as
barely to touch the fringe of the great race — com
pared with the prevailing temporary loss of the ad
vantages of generations of training in practical

128

The Period of War and Reconstruction

arts, the racial estrangement in their old homes, and
the long years of protected idleness and sloth such
as Carl Schurz describes?

During this Reconstruction Period, the religious
life as well as the industrial life of the Negro was
disturbed and oftentimes destroyed with a resul
tant loss in the development of good citizenship.

The condition of the Church in the South, where
so vast a majority of the Negroes were destined to
retain their homes, is beyond a healthy imagination
now to picture. The armies of the long years of
war had swept over them from Virginia to Texas.
The Rev. Bowyer Stewart, in his Hale Memorial
Sermon of 1913, gives a summary, the accuracy of
which may be accepted. In Virginia, some 14
churches were destroyed, and 24 more or less dam
aged; in South Carolina, 13 churches destroyed,
and 26 chapels for Negroes; in Tennessee, only 3
churches escaped injury; while in Georgia, Ala
bama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, the
conditions were somewhat worse than in North
Carolina. The many churches and schools put to
military use, meant the destruction of furniture and
the abuse of buildings, which rendered the latter
useless for the time. Episcopal residences and rec
tories, in some cases, suffered either total or partial
destruction. The poverty was very great. A care
ful examination, reported to the South Carolina
Convention, in 1868, showed that "along the entire
seaboard, from North Carolina to Georgia, where
our Church had flourished for more than a cen
tury, there are but four parishes which maintain

129

Wanted - Leaders !

religious services; not one, outside the city of
Charleston, can be called a living, self-sustaining
parish; their clergy live by fishing, farming and
mechanic arts." Other Dioceses, though in less
measure, as a rule, experienced great loss and great
poverty.

But there were great men at the helm — Bishops
Johns, Atkinson, Davis (soon succeeded by Howe),
Elliott, the two Wilmers, Quintard, Lay, and
Gregg. The five years to 1871, showed recovery
of white communicants in nearly every Diocese
except South Carolina. All alike had lost many
of their negro members, the greatest loss being in
South Carolina which originally had most. South
Carolina, however, is a fairly typical illustration of
the comparative loss of negro members throughout
the South. In 1861, the Diocesan Journal records
2979 white communicants and 2973 colored; that
of 1872, 3102 white, 618 colored, most of these in
Calvary Church and St. Mark's, Charleston.

Why was this? The facts are the more aston
ishing when one reflects upon the universal practice
of the Church, during so many generations, of
close religious association; upon the success of
Christian teaching so apparently universal upon
the complete trust in one another exhibited during
the test of war; and the resultant feeling of affec
tionate gratitude on the part of the white Church
men.

Moreover, the latter were prepared to continue
the Christian ministrations under the new order in
the confident expectation that, however changed

130

The Period of War and Reconstruction

the economic and social relation, nothing could
sever the bond of Christian fellowship in the
Church. Bishop Davis, in 1866, was expressing a
conviction universally shared when, looking out
upon the vast confusion, he nevertheless declared,
"I have not complete statistics; but am convinced,
from observation and information, that, in all cases
where the colored population shall be reinstated in
their former localities, they will return to the com
munion of the Church." Unfortunately, however,
succeeding years bore testimony to progressive
losses, until another Bishop voiced the thought
which experience, in turn, had universally brought :
"The defection from the Church is almost univer
sal. In some parishes I have visited, which a few
years ago numbered more than a hundred commu
nicants, not one has come forward to kneel at the
altar, and very few to enter the church. The voice
of remonstrance from their once-honored pastors
falls unheeded upon their ears; unscriptural reve
lation are substituted for the Word of God; the
ancient forms of worship are declared to quench the
ministrations of the Spirit; and the sober worship
of the sanctuary is exchanged for the midnight
orgies of a frantic superstition.55 There are some
very bright and cheering exceptions, but this quo
tation from Bishop Wilmer, of Louisiana, describes
the rule.

Why was it ? The question may not be answered
in a short phrase, and probably may not be an
swered satisfactorily at all.

There was the fact that the Negro's religious

131

Wanted - Leaders !

teachers had been his masters, beloved under the
old regime, but whose guidance and control, even
in church, was to be regarded with wary suspicion.
He could not differentiate between the essential
wrong of a system, and the blessing which the
Church had brought to him in that system. For
the present, the wrong was uppermost in his mind.

Then there was the reconstruction system, and
the hope held, in confident expectation, of a change
in condition which a changed social relation would
miraculously effect. The negro masses could not
foresee the slow, toilsome pathway up which every
primitive race has plodded to changed conditions,
and better.

Again, there was the natural conviction of the
Negro that his freed allegiance was now due to his
northern liberators; and this, beyond any bond of
slave-time friendship with those who had held him
in slavery. It was the newborn freedom, from
restraint, entering like new wine into old vessels
overstrained.

Finally, there was among the few negro leaders,
(and, because few, therefore all the more power
ful) the exultant and alluring ambition to play
the man, and to attempt to demonstrate the full-
grown majority of a race just dropping its swad
dling clothes.

These were the conditions (inevitable to the
change of social structure from slave to free) ready
at hand when the reconstruction policies offered the
chance to unscrupulous politicians from North
and South. They offered a ready opportunity for

132

The Period of War and Reconstruction

inspiring the Negro with a subtle distrust of former
masters now become neighbors. Racial hatred for
the wrongs of slavery, now became magnified to the
exclusion of any benefits whatever derived from the
system. For the unscrupulous, the rewards in
creased with the widening of the chasm between
race and race; they were secured at the price of
the ruthless exploitation of the Negroes, and the
breeding of a spirit of suspicion and distrust toward
their old friends.

To the positive and infallible declarations to the
Negroes that allegiance to the Church of their mas
ters meant the continuation of slavery, the great
racial instinct, as yet untutored to know better,
responded with tremendous and deep fervor. Only
the few could know better, and have the courage to
follow their own convictions. And what else could
have been possible in view of the actual condi
tions? Had wiser counsels prevailed, and had old
racial and personal attachments and interdependen-
cies, so carefully built up, been fostered as the best
condition under which to work out the stupendous
problems of the new time, no one can doubt that
the story of American life would have been dif
ferent, and few can doubt that it would have been
better. As it was, the conditions which served the
unworthy ends of the white demagogue, were sadly
fruitful in heartrending results upon the religion of
the Negro.

For many, there was the clinging memory of
heathen superstitions — hardly asleep — certainly not
dead. There was the "call of the wild" — powerful

133

Wanted - Leaders !

over all nature, however highly developed — and
now heard by a people only just freed from the
leash. What race in all history has ever faced such
sudden, such powerful temptations as were freely
cast before this people, backed up by military occu
pancy? The amazing thing is, that they stood be
fore such temptations with as little resulting harm
to themselves and to the Whites as may justly be
charged against either.

It was not alone, or even chiefly, that this was
made possible by precautions to prevent racial
clashes. It was, before everything else, because
of the two centuries of American life in which the
Negroes had more and more progressed in all that
goes to transform heathen savages into Christian
men and women, and had earned the right of trust
and affection without the clogging burden of vast
responsibility impossible of fulfilment. Dr. Wash
ington is right when he says, as already noted, "I
do not believe that the Negro was so much at fault
. . . . for the mistakes that were made in too
many cases, as were the unscrupulous white lead
ers who got the Negroes' confidence ....
to further their own ends."

Those years of association had produced their
intimate, confidential friendships between the white
master and the strong head-men on every planta
tion — friendships which nothing could destroy ; and
every community points back to level headed, wise,
older Negroes who saw, though they could not fully
measure, the seriousness brought by the new day.
The quiet, almost secret conferences of these old

134

The Period of War and Reconstruction

friends about the new life, entered as leaven into
the great unleavened, working, dismayed mass. The
break became a chasm as reconstruction advanced.
The race had not yet had time to become estab
lished.

We must note, too, that slavery, however service
able in the discipline of a new people, did not con
duce to self-reliance in any walk of life; it was not
the favorable condition out of which to develop
steadfastness in the religious life so essential to
desirable citizenship. "The law is the schoolmaster to
lead to Christ," is not only the terse description of a
long episode in the history of our religious fore
fathers, it is still more the expression of the law
of religious growth. First, there is the period of
the imposition of law, with its tuition of restraint
from without, gradually developing into self-im
posed control as the sense of the reasonable justice
and righteousness of it develops. Then the habit
of balanced self-restraint, as the motive of right
eousness, becomes instinct with life through the
growth of the Christ-life in us, when the pattern
life is the only life dominant over conscience.

To have expected this process to be completed,
and its fruits full-grown, in any considerable num
ber of this newly, partially converted people, was
certainly unreasonable. It is our complaint of our
own race, that, after more than twelve centuries of
inherited Christian faith, we are so far from this
consummation. At the very best, slavery was the
reign of law, but with no settled objective toward
the full "liberty of the children of God"; and as

135

Wanted - Leaders !

long as St. Paul's law of development was arrested
in mid-operation, it had scant chance of complete
fruition.

In an age of progressive education through the
printed page, this accepted means of hastening tui
tion in religious knowledge and spiritual charac
ter, was withheld from the slave as inapplicable,
even dangerous, to his condition. While it may be
recalled that Christianity flourished before print
ing, it is enough to say that human progress is the
product of its own age, and the condition of an age
retards him who declines or is deprived of con
formity to it, as readily as it stimulates him who
conforms.

Such is our attempt to explain the very great
defection of the Negro from the white Churches
after the war. Doubtless it falls short of being a
complete explanation, but it seems, to be at least a
natural one.

The year 1880 may properly be considered as
marking the close of the period of the War and
Reconstruction. With exceptions noted later, the
period was one of consternation to the leaders of
the Church, and deep regret over what seemed the
failure of the long years of devoted ministry ; for
the negro race had shown retrogression in every
way, religiously, morally, and industrially. Those
twentv years of lost opportunity of which Dr.
Washington wrote, were lost to all save the very
few who were strong enough to yield themselves
to the best influences, and steadfastly to build that
best into themselves. To the Church leaders of the

136

The Period of War and Reconstruction

day, all seemed lost. But was all lost? The an
swer of faith is an emphatic NO!

The Episcopal Church lost uncounted numbers of
members. Some of these doubtless were never
shepherded to any earthly fold. Most of them,
with no education to add power to a half-formed
faith, became partial victims of the temptations of
traditional heathen religions. But the newly born
and developing faith was not lost, even though the
Fathers' anxiety and profound distress over the
lapse of spiritual children to "indications of Afri
can barbarism" are pathetic excuse for their de
spair. It would have been as unnatural for the
Whites to measure the full significance of this day
of complete revolution in the life of the Negroes, as
for the Negroes to escape the first consequences of
it. Nor was it possible for such an era to end in a
day. Other peoples have had revolutions, and with
like results. The French Revolution, with nearly
1700 years of Christian training behind its victims,
and its consequences still a factor of no small power
in French life, is a pointed instance. Indeed eras,
good or bad, do not really end ; they carry forward
and onward. The era of Reconstruction carried on
ward in American life ; and, in like manner, the era
of Slavery, with its mingled beneficence and cru
elty, its Christian and industrial training inter
twined with heathen traditions, its regime of earn
est, zealous, loving ministry, its "line upon line and
precept upon precept" of unwearying tuition- —this,
too, for better or worse, influenced the Negro of a
later period. When, at length, the excesses inevi-

137

Wanted - Leaders !

tably connected with the new-found freedom had
ceased, and when the years of loss had come to an
end, then the old training, religious and industrial,
and the need for its power in racial development
came once more to the fore in the minds of these
few truly great and conspicuous leaders whose lives
spanned the great gulf of past and present. These
were able to wrest much of advantage to their race
out of the very mistakes in education which Dr.
Washington laments.

We have reminded ourselves of the tremendous,
the indescribably difficult, task of the very small
band of negro leaders, in guiding their people to a
saner life and to the ambition to fill life with the
best that God's gifts to them would enable. Of
such, were Bishop Payne, of the African Methodist
Church; John Jasper, the famous Richmond
preacher; Alexander Crummell, of the Episcopal
Church; Henry M. Turner, of the African Metho
dist Church ; Isaiah Montgomery, of Mount Bayou,
Mississippi; and, of the younger men, Booker T.
Washington and his successor Robert R. Moton,
Archdeacon Russell, Dr. Bragg, Dr. Tunnell, Dr.
Dubois, Bishop Demby, Professor Battle, and many
others of their generation. What a load they have
had to carry as represented by ignorance, supersti
tion, low moral tone, shiftlessness and unresponse
in the vast majority of their brethren! What a
task, to overcome the losses of that very era which
produced their younger men! What a supreme
faith, what unswerving confidence in their great
mission, were demanded, and in large measure pro-

138

The Period of War and Reconstruction

vided! We can but reflect that, whether or no the
Whites recognize the wisdom of the methods and
philosophies of one or all or any of the negro lead
ers, the greatest sin we can commit toward them is
to withhold our sympathy from them in their toil
some, troublous, tragic, upward pathway along
which, with sweat of blood, they must lead the mil
lions of their brethren. The demand of their con
dition, ever since Reconstruction, has been, and is
now, for that patient, helpful sympathy from which
confidence is born, the confidence which invites mu
tual conference, the correction of error, the enlight
enment of motive and objective, and so on to a com
mon task to which White and Negro alike can
devote their best efforts.

As Dr. Washington says, it was too late to cry
over what might have been. The era produced at
least one institution (possibly there may have been
others) which a wise head conceived — Hampton
Institute, Virginia. General Armstrong, with
equally wise retrospect and foresight, builded upon
the past for an enduring future — a future that
would restore the best in the past, and make the
best better. Hampton would have been a success
even had it died after producing Booker T. Wash
ington, founder of Tuskegee Institute; and James
S. Russell, founder of St Paul's School, Law-
renceville, Va.

There was something, too, that the Reconstruc
tion Era could not destroy. It could fan racial prej
udices, and set race against race in political antag
onism ; but it could not destroy the deep, ever abid-

139

Wanted - Leaders !

ing affections between the races, which the old life
had nurtured. That remained as both the motive
for redeeming the time, and the foundation for the
rebuilded life so sadly shattered and dismembered.
The era ended, white and black again took up the
task of rebuilding.

Of the total negro population, in 1880, about
95 per cent were still in the South; and, in 1920,
after forty years of development, and in spite of
the enticement of the fabulous wages in manufac
turing States .created by the World War, this per
centage is still nearly 75 per cent. The South is the
Negro's home, and the conditions of his greatest
opportunity are there. This is the testimony of
both black and white observers. Read Edgar Gard
ner Murphy's Problems of the Present South (p.
184 et seq.) ; DuBois's The Philadelphia Negro]
and this passage from the address by the Principal
of Tuskegee which, in short, expresses the witness
of all alike : "Wherever the Negro has lost ground,
industrially, in the South, it is not because there is
prejudice against him, as a skilled laborer, on the
part of the native southern white man. . . .
There is almost no prejudice, against the Negro in
the South in matters of business, so far as the
native Whites are concerned/' This was published
in 1899. Since then, Labor Unions have had a dis
concerting relation to the matter — a relation still
in solution. But certainly there was a free field
for the Negro for about half a century, coupled
with about as much help from the white people as
they could give and as the Negro would seek ;

140

The Period of War and Reconstruction

from the Northern White also, about as much as
the Negro could profitably use. The results of these
fifty years seem to prove this, and to offer irrefut
able evidence of the excellent preparatory work of
the old patriarchal system which we have reviewed
in a previous chapter.

141

CHAPTER VI
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

\Y7~E have studied the Negro, both slave and free,
in his native home and when transplanted.
We have looked upon the picture which his life ex
hibits under these varying conditions. We have
traced his career through the school of slavery into
the larger school of free American life, and seen
the picture which his life has wrought here. We
turn now to the forces which have produced a trans
formation not short of startling to the casual ob
server. The two forces are education, which oc
cupies this chapter, and the Christian religion which
will engage us in the next.

Among the educated colonists of the early years,
there was no question raised as to the education
of slaves. Schools were few for themselves, and in
most cases instruction in letters fell among family
duties. Slaves were as yet indentured servants, few
in number, and were probably taught, if at all,
along with the children of the family. Intelligent
masters naturally regarded intelligent servants as
most profitable to their mutual interest. Unlettered
owners quite as naturally had neither the wish nor
the ability to instruct their servants in letters, and
both alike enjoyed the freedom from such mental
strain.

143

Wanted - Leaders !

As the population — free and slave — increased,
and as social life became more complex and the
status of the slaves fixed, questions as to the educa
tion of the latter were raised. The cultured slave
holders very generally, and the missionaries uni
versally, contended for their education; the exploit
ers and materialists usually opposed it; though
there may have been exceptions on both sides. It
was not until after the insurrectionary movements
around 1835, that laws against negro education
were possible because upheld by public sentiment.
By this time it was very generally feared that ability
to read would be the ready means of learning of
uprisings abroad and of suggesting them at home.

Perhaps the earliest systematic effort toward
negro education was in 1691, when, in Virginia,
the Church became the agency through which the
apprenticeship of Negroes was made. Youths gifted
mechanically and industrially were indentured on
condition that the talent be developed and that they
be taught to read; in some cases "to read the Bible
distinctly" was specified. Both before and after
that date, there is abundant evidence that parochial
instruction was not unusual by the missionaries,
especially in the southern colonies.

In 1704, Elias Neau, a French Protestant, who
had come to New York and conformed to the Eng
lish Church, opened a school for the Negroes. Suc
cess attended his efforts; but, in 1712, attempts were
made to close his school as contributing to insur
rectionary movements. Mr. Neau was able to prove
that only one of his pupils had joined such a move-

144

The Education of the Negro

ment, and the school continued its good work under
successive teachers and rectors for more than half
a century. Originally this school was under the
auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel ("S. P. G."), but later it came under paro
chial support, presumably that of Trinity Church.

The S. P. G. required of its teachers that the
Negroes and Indians be taught to read the Bible
and other useful books and poems, and be grounded
in the Church Catechism. Some three years be
fore the opening of the Neau School, the Rev.
Samuel Thomas had established an S. P. G. school
in Goose Creek Parish, S. C. Mr. Thomas in his
account of the one thousand slaves in his parish,
reported that many of them could read the Bible
distinctly. Gradually schools were here and there
dotted over the colonies, in connection with the
churches.

The most ambitious enterprise of these' early
years, was the school established in Charleston,
about 1741. Two slaves were bought, Harry and
Andrew, selected for their unusual intelligence, and
trained to be the teachers of others, and especially
of slaves who could carry back to their homes the
learning acquired. Commissary Garden erected the
building and launched the school with about sixty
young students at the opening. The promoters
planned to send out annually from thirty to forty
youths as teachers. Unhappily its life was short,
less than twenty-five years.

About the same time the Catechetical Schools in
St. Peter's and Christ Church, Philadelphia, were

145

10

Wanted - Leaders !

opened with William Sturgeon, a graduate of Yale,
as instructor. His nineteen years of service and its
satisfactory fruits entitle him to rank among the
great teachers of his time.

Commissary Bray of Maryland, through influen
tial friends in England, gathered a school-fund
whose benefactions overflowed into Pennsylvania
on the North, and North Carolina on the South.

Meantime the. Quakers, who had been the first,
were always the most consistent in teaching the
Negroes, often defying both sentiment and local
laws that they might be true to their convictions.
The Moravians also were active in the settlement at
Bethlehem, Pa., as well as in New Jersey and in
the Carolinas.

An interesting private venture was that of Mrs.
Elize Lucas Pinckney, mother of the two patriot
statesmen and soldiers of the Revolution, who,
while managing her father's South Carolina estate,
found time to teach a class of young Negroes to
read. This about 1740.

Quite naturally, the American Revolution stimu
lated greatly the cause of education, both of the
Whites and of the Negroes, when it was declared
to be both the duty and the right of man under the
new institutions. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson,
and Madison, were foremost in commending grad
ual emancipation after education and training for
citizenship. The following passages from Doctor
Woodson's Education of the Negro Prior to 1861,
fairly express the teaching of these and other
Fathers of the Republic. "Many Americans who

146

The Education of the Negro

considered slavery an evil, had found no way out
of the difficulty, when the alternative was to turn
loose upon society so many uncivilized men without
the ability to discharge the duties of citizenship."
"These leaders recommended gradual emancipation
for States having a large slave population, that those
designated for freedom might first be instructed in
the value and meaning of liberty to render them
comfortable in the use of it."

How many of the heartaches and tragedies of the
succeeding long years might have been prevented,
had the people of America been as ready to follow
their leaders in making pathways for peace and
righteousness, and in establishing right and justice
and self-government for their Negro and Indian
people, as they had been ready to follow them in
paths of war in fending their own rights and estab
lishing their own self-government! But self-in
terest makes partisans of the general run of people
not less now than then.

The Fathers of our Country, of our (then) new
model of social life, found the motive of education
to be comfort in freedom and usefulness in citizen
ship. They looked forward to the day when present
slaves would be future citizens. They looked out
upon their day in which education was the prepara
tion of the embryo citizens. The thought of the
era greatly stimulated interest in education.

In the northern States, education of the Whites
took a leap forward; and not a few schools for
Negroes, often separate at their own request, were
opened and adapted to their needs and occupations.

147

Wanted - Leaders !

In New England, Boston taking the lead, the
negro children were generally admitted to the
schools. The Negroes opened a school for them
selves in one of their homes and applied for its
admission and better equipment as a separate school,
but this was declined.

The Clarkson Hall Schools in Philadelphia were
the most successful, perhaps of the time; and by
1815 were offering free tuition to more than 300
pupils. Evening sessions were opened for adults.
In Maryland, the Roman Catholics and Quakers
were foremost in this field of endeavor. In Virginia,
the cities of Alexandria, Richmond, Petersburg, and
Norfolk were chief centers of education. In Alex
andria, both races attended the same schools, a
practice probably growing out of a like custom in
Sunday school. In the rural districts, the instruc
tion of the Negroes was done through the churches
very generally, spelling and reading of the Bible
being the goal.

North Carolina was even more liberal in her at
titude toward education, and the Negroes "attained
rank among the most enlightened in ante-bellum
days." A remarkable instance, all the more so
because the only one known, is that of the Rev.
John Chavis, a Presbyterian minister, described as
a full-blooded Negro of dark brown color, whose
intellectual gifts early attracted the attention of his
white neighbors of Oxford, N. C. He was sent
to Princeton to see if a Negro would take a collegi
ate education. There he took high rank as a good
Latin, and a fair Greek scholar. Upon graduation,

148

The Education of the Negro

he spent many years as a missionary and pastor
until laws were passed, in 1831, forbidding Negroes
to preach. He then became a teacher, opening a
classical school for white pupils. Some of the
most distinguished men of the State were his pa
trons and pupils. Professor Basset of Trinity Col
lege, N. C, tells his story, and names among his
pupils, W. P. Mangurn, afterwards U. S. Senator;
Archibald and John Henderson, sons of the Chief
Justice; Charles Manley, afterwards Governor of
North Carolina; and Dr. James L. Wortham, of
Oxford.

Beyond the parish school instruction, there were
no schools reported in South Carolina outside of
Charleston. In that city, schools for the free Ne
groes taught by white teachers were maintained up
to the Civil War, and, indeed, until about ten years
ago, when the Negroes requested their own teachers
to be substituted for the Whites.

The combined result of the Abolition movement
and the insurrections in 1830 and later, was a reac
tion against such education, very general over the
entire country. Even in New Hampshire and Con
necticut, attempts to open schools for Negroes were
thwarted. Prudence Crandall, a Quakeress, was
imprisoned in Connecticut ; and a newly built school
in Canaan, N. H., was wrecked. By about 1850,
hostility had abated, and, in the north, activities
were revived and stimulated; while in the South,
Negroes, in small numbers, received some teaching
in private or clandestinely. There were exceptions
to this last statement, for there were open schools

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Wanted - Leaders !

in Petersburg, Va., and in Charleston, S. C, as well
as in North Carolina.

Before the Civil War, there were three opportu
nities for higher learning opened to the Negroes —
Oberlin College, 1833, and Wilberforce, 1856 (both
in Ohio), and Lincoln University, 1854, in Penn
sylvania. Apart from these, a very few Negroes, as
in the case of the Rev. John Chavis, were by favor
admitted to other colleges in the North and West.
The Episcopal Church was first in the field of edu
cation as of evangelization, the two were wedded
together; but it was not until after Emancipation
that higher education was made a part of her school
system for the Negroes.

It is well to remember that, from our present
point of view, the era we have been reviewing is
a primitive one. Up to 1860, most of our popula
tion lived isolated, rural lives, and about one-half
of our white citizens were deprived of schooling,
and were classed as illiterate. Literary ambition
was not a normal asset. Among the Negroes, but
a bare ten per cent were literate at the close of this
period; and, of these, the far greater number were
free Negroes in the upper tier of States. During
the Civil War, this percentage seems to have de
clined; and, at its close, something like six to eight
per cent expresses the ratio of the literate.

The after-war period opens with the operations
of the Freedmen's Bureau, created in connection
with the War Department, to instruct and prepare
the Negroes for the exercise of the rights and duties
of citizenship. In this, the Government acted in

150

The Education of the Negro

conjunction with Boards of Churches, either al
ready formed or at once organized.

In the South, the Episcopal Church and the Ro
man Catholic were the only large and undivided
bodies with which such alliance could be made. The
disaffection among the negro members of the Epis
copal Church stripped her of any great powers of
usefulness; therefore, the Boards acting with the
Freedmen's Bureau were generally northern. Among
these, the American Missionary Society, at first in
terdenominational and later Congregational, must
hold distinction as first in service.

The most notable achievement of the movement
was Hampton Institute, whose foundations were so
wisely laid by General Armstrong. At once our
Board of Missions organized a Freedman's Bu
reau; and through its co-operation there were
opened, by 1870, a score or more of schools in
North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee,
Georgia, and Kentucky. Of these, St. Augustine's,
Raleigh, has had a continuous and distinguished
career, the story of which appears later.

In 1873, the Petersburg School became a Normal
School under Major Giles B. Cooke, a Confederate
officer who, entering the ministry, became rector of
St. Stephen's Church for Negroes. The story of
this school is interesting as the model of other less
noted ones throughout the South.

Early in 1866, our Church Freedman's Bureau
sent, to Petersburg, Miss Amanda Aiken (whose
memory has ever since been revered) as the teacher
and organizer of St. James' School which was first

151

Wanted - Leaders !

opened in a private room. After many vicissitudes,
the school was finally established in a house which,
though inconvenient and distant a mile from the
old site, served to shelter a good number of the
320 pupils formerly enrolled. Under the name,
St. Stephen's, a new and attractive church and
school were completed in 1868, and the Rev. Jos.
S. Atwell, a colored priest, took charge the follow
ing year and conducted the parochial school until
1873. Then "Major Cooke," as he was generally
called, already a teacher of the Negroes in the
neighborhood, became rector. The greatest need of
the time was for negro teachers, hence the expan
sion into the Normal School. About as great a
need was for ministers, and soon the Normal School
added a course for their training under the Rev.
Dr. Spencer, and became a branch of the Virginia
Seminary. The "Major's School" became a recog
nized institution, gaining the complete confidence
of both races in a day when such an achievement
was not easy. Among the first pupils sent out was
the Rev. J. H. M. Pollard, later Archdeacon of his
native Diocese. The Rev. Jos. W. Cain had re
ceived his early schooling under Miss Aiken, and
later was a deputy to General Convention from
Texas. The Rev. James S. Russell was the first
student of the Theological Training School, which
laid the foundation for the Payne Divinity School.
During its fourteen years of life, many were the
teachers sent out by Major Cooke's School, and
they were in great demand because of the excellence
of their training.

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The Education of the Negro

One other type of school of this period (the type
of many) should attract the interest of the student
of the subject — i. e., the country schools. There
is no better sample, perhaps, than the Clarkson
School in Middle South Carolina on the Wateree
River. The first Clarkson was an Englishman who
settled in his Wateree home, east of Columbia, early
in the last century. He at once built chapels on
his plantations for his Negroes, and had them
taught by a clergyman in catechetical schools. At
his death, he left a substantial sum for this purpose;
but the laws were adverse, and the bequest could
not be fulfilled. It was to their honor that each
generation should have desired to do more than
compensate their Negroes for this loss. The last
of the immediate family, Miss Julia Clarkson, is
now the devoted teacher and lay missionary. The
war and its aftermath were very destructive to the
region, and the Chapel in Middleburg fell a victim,
with other property. Only occasional Services could
be held, and instruction was intermittent. The Rev.
B. B. Babbitt, a graduate of Amherst, with a spirit
and zeal holier than a crusader, had left his New
England home to make good the promises for the
Negroes. He took orders and was a welcome helper
and pastor to the Clarkson's Chapel whenever his
duties in Columbia allowed.

It was not until 1879 that Mr. Thomas Clarkson,
in middle life, was ordained. He served his entire
ministry fulfilling the ancestral trust as pastor and
teacher. He rebuilt the Middleburg church largely
with his own hands, and preached and taught until

153

Wanted - Leaders !

his death. His wife continued the school to her
death; and, since then, the daughter. Both have
also taken the duties of lay-reader as necessity re
quired. Mrs. Clarksori moved the school to her
home in the Sand Hills, Services and school being
held under a great maple tree at first, or, when the
weather required, in a farm house, until, through
the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Saul of Philadelphia,
a chapel was built and later a separate school house.

The ideal had been a boarding-industrial-school,
for two obvious reasons which the terms suggest.
Then another fire destroyed the Chapel; but again
it was restored, largely by the negro members, and
renamed St. Thomas in memory of their beloved
rector, Mr. Thomas Clarkson.

The transformation in the life of the neighbor
hood is strikingly described by Miss Clarkson. The
moral tone appears immeasurably better, marriage
relations far more constant, embarrassment of in
quiry about the parentage of children immensely
relieved as compared with the postwar period of re
trogression, and families quiet and reverent at
Chapel, and sending their children to school. "The
school house is the center of community life, the
clubs meet there, the Woman's Auxiliary, and other
organizations. We have sociables, wedding recep
tions, sometimes dances, and, last January, a Golden
Wedding!" Sewing and cooking are taught, the
former during the summer, and, at present, the
latter in Miss Clarkson' s kitchen, there being no
domestic science outfit. A small canning outfit
serves the school and community, and is used to

154

The Education of the Negro

the limit in summer. A colored missionary, the
Rev. J. C. Perry, now serves the mission, baptizes
the babies, and administers the Holy Communion.
Miss Clarkson is the tireless day-by-day minister
to all needs of the needy.

This description is extended to the present. It
is a fair sample of the rural schools — more than
fifty — throughout the Fourth, or Sewanee, Prov
ince, some of them with long histories and some
recently opened. Scarcely one of the older schools
but illustrates some motive of devotion on the part
of white churchmen toward their negro friends;
and most of the later ones illustrate equally the zeal
and self-sacrifice of more fortunate Negroes for
their less favored brethren. The story of each is
a tempting romance of missions, into which lack of
space forbids our entrance in this study.

There were in 1922 fourteen such parochial
schools in the Diocese of South Carolina with an
enrollment of over 1,000 children, and in North
and East Carolina there were twenty-one similar
schools. These schools furnish the bulk of the
students who attend such institutions as St. Paul's,
Lawrenceville, and St. Augustine's, Raleigh. Many
of them give courses in cooking, sewing, and man
ual training, with rudiments of a good high-school
education.

In any discussion of the education of the Negro
is involved naturally the all-important question,
what is the purpose of his education? It has al
ready been mentioned that a general prejudice
against higher education existed, because of the fear

155

Wanted - Leaders !

that an educated Negro might be a trouble-maker.
The weak points in much of the education of the
Reconstruction Period have also been noted. But
present-day conditions have brought the education
of the Negro prominently to the fore among our
national problems as we realize what it means to
the nation to have within its heart not only a race
within a race, but an illiterate race within an edu
cated democracy.

Feeling that the Church held the only satisfac
tory answer to this question, in that the purpose of
education in the Church is to train mind and soul
and body for a Christian citizenship, the idea of a
Church Institute was suggested in 1905, and its
incorporation was strongly and successfully advo
cated by Bishop Greer and Mr. George Foster Pea-
body of New York. This proposal was approved
by the Board of Missions, and, in 1906, the Institute
began its work. The Rev. Samuel H. Bishop, as
General Agent, was the happy choice of the corpo
ration. He immediately made a thorough survey
of the educational system of the South, and a sec
ond, equally thorough, of the work of the Church
in educating the Negroes. The ultimate purpose
was to be of assistance to all the schools in the
Dioceses, but it was necessary for the new Institute
to walk before it could run. The South was doing
much, though with inadequate resources, and the
North had become somewhat apathetic because of
the many independent appeals by individuals with
no organizations behind, or authority over, them.
Confidence had to be restored in order that interest

156

The Education of the Negro

might be awakened. So the Institute was virtually
an authorized medium of good faith between the
northern helper and the southern school worker.

It was expected that this special organization
would tend to emphasize the obligation of the
Church for the moral and spiritual advancement of
the Negro together with his intellectual advance.
Its purpose was to give unity to the educational
work already being done by the Church among the
Negroes, and to make clear the great need of ex
tension and thorough organization. The intention
was that it should come to the relief of every
Southern Diocese by developing in each at least one
Industrial High School for the Christian training
of teachers and leaders of the negro race.

The founding of the Institute was to many a
.doubtful venture since it began its career without
an endowment, and with an exceedingly limited
list of subscribers; but the faith of its founders
has been justified. In 1906, only three schools,
St. Paul's, St. Augustine's, and the Bishop Payne
Divinity School, accepted the supervision of the
Institute. Today there are ten schools affiliated
with it, with an annual enrollment of from 2,700
to 3,000 students.

The three largest and best defined of our schools
— St. Augustine's, Raleigh, N. C., St. Paul's, Law-
renceville, and Bishop Payne Divinity School,
Petersburg, Virginia — were chosen as institutions
out of which "to create typical examples of success
ful correlation and development," as Mr. Bishop
advised. These represented respectively a high de-

157

Wanted - Leaders !

gree of industrial excellence, advanced collegiate
standards, and thorough training for the ministry.
The first two furnished models for future Institute
Schools in every needed feature of education. The
Payne Divinity School should furnish all that the
Church will need, for many generations, in its spe
cial sphere.

St. Augustine's, Raleigh, N. C, the oldest, owed
its birth to the Church Freedman's Bureau. It was
incorporated in 1867, and opened its doors in 1868,
the Rev. J. B. Smith, D. D., being Principal. As
soon as the Civil War was over, the need for teach
ers to instruct the millions of freedmen was recog
nized, and this was St. Augustine's first motive.
As in the case of Major Cooke's School in Vir
ginia, the need for clergymen was felt in North
Carolina, and a theological department was opened
about 1875. Here were trained such excellent men
as Alston, McDuffey, Perry and Delany.

From the beginning, the collegiate department has
been emphasized, and it now has no superior among
the schools for Negroes in the South. All depart
ments, however, are allied with the industrial and
mechanical. Several of the school buildings are
testimonials of the skill and industry of the students
in carpentry and masonry, and there is abundant
witness to that of the young women in the furnish
ing of rooms, hospital, and chapel, and in the mak
ing of their own clothing. There are 110 acres
occupied by the school, affording both recreational
grounds and agricultural training in intensive farm
ing. St. Agnes' Hospital, founded in 1896 on the

153

The Education of the Negro

school grounds, has long established its reputation
both for its benefits to school and community and
as a training school for nurses. From sixty to
eighty patients from the two Carolinas are generally
in the wards, and thirty nurses continually under
training in a three years' course.*

The fruits of St. Augustine's have gone forth
to nourish the Negroes of every State beyond the
seas and in every profession. Clergymen, trained
in this school, have laid the foundations of negro
parishes and missions everywhere. Teachers, like
Alfred Griffin, Professor Atkins of the A. M. E.
Zion Church, Wm. A. Perry of our St. Athanasius'
School, are everywhere multiplying the influence of
their Alma Mater in geometrical ratio. Young men
and women of St. Augustine's, wherever met, arc
holding up the high standard which made them
what they are. Physicians, like young Delany of
Raleigh (son of Bishop Delany), nurses, teachers,
etc., have gone forth steadily from the student-body
grown from the three of twenty years ago to the
nearly five hundred of today.

St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School at Law-
renceville, Va., was founded in 1888 by the Rev.
James S. Russell, now familiarly known to the
.whole Church as "Archdeacon Russell." fCon-
fidence was soon established, the school increased,
and In 1888, the Rev. Dr. Saul, of Philadelphia,
furnished a building adequate for the needs of the
time. Mr. Russell's ideals enlarged with the prog-

*See Appendix, Note A.
tSee Appendix, Note B.

159

Wanted - Leaders !

ress of his work. Property was secured upon other
people's trust in the integrity of the hard-working
young clergyman; for there was no money as yet,
only faith. Gradual extensions were made, indus
tries were introduced, buildings were erected by the
pupils, and the farm was made productive.

Today the school has 1,600 acres and 40 build
ings, large and small, three of which are permanent
brick structures. The brick and much of the lum
ber are products of the school's lands and student-
labor. There are fifty, officers and teachers, and
quite 500 pupils from twenty-six States, as well as
from Cuba, Porto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and even
Africa. Fully one-fifth of the negro clergy have
been its students. It has sent out 600 graduates,
and given training to 5,000 other undergraduates.

Doctor Frissell said of Brunswick County that
St. Paul's School "has well-nigh revolutionized it."
Literacy has risen from 12 per cent to 75 per cent.
Moral standards have advanced, and the jail is de
serted. Industrial standards share the impetus, and
negro farmers occupy their own homes in great
numbers in the two contiguous counties. County
school houses have been improved, the sessions
lengthened, and local self-taxation enlarged; while
new schools have risen to meet the increased de
mand. The missionary spirit of St. Paul's is strong
in its students. Numerous are the chapels and
schools which owe their existence to its graduates.
Doctor Frissell's judgment is more than justified.

The Bishop Payne Divinity School at Peters
burg, Va., incorporated in 1884, "had its origin in

160

The Education of the Negro

the necessities of the case," as its catalogue an
nounces. It grew out of the theological department
of Major Cooke's St. Stephen's Normal School..
Doctor Spencer, the first teacher, was appointed
and supported by the Trustees of the Virginia
Seminary. The school is finely located and has five
good buildings, including a beautiful chapel re
cently completed, and maintains the same standard
that other such schools have attained. The late
Rev. C. Braxton Bryan, D. D., member of an old
and distinguished Virginia family, was its Dean
from the beginning. Examining chaplains find the
graduates fully up to those from any of our Semi
naries. The happy combination of able white pro
fessors with the splendidly trained and equipped
negro warden, the Rev. Samuel W. Grice, and the
close association between the faculty and the
students, make an ideal atmosphere for the highest
and holiest results. The students have further
training in life-work through their missionary activ
ities in and around Petersburg.

Statistics of the school show that 92 students
prepared there have been ordained to our Ministry;
16 of these have died in Orders; 76 of the Alumni
are now in Orders. If you will add the two latter
figures, you will find that every one of the ninety-
two men prepared at Payne Divinity is honorably
accounted for. Not one has, so far, put his hand
to the plow and turned backward. These statistics
do not take account of a considerable number who
studied at the school, but for one reason or another
were not ordained. The ten students this year in

161
11

Wanted - Leaders !

attendance are from ten Dioceses. Of these "three
students served in France during the war, two of
them were lieutenants in the Army, one was in the

Navy Two of our Alumni have been

elected to the Episcopate, the Rev. James S. Rus
sell, D. D., of St. Paul's School, Lawrenceville, and
the Rev. Samuel W. Grice, B. D., Warden. Both
declined the honor in order to continue their work
in these important schools/' Who will undertake
to measure the value of the investment in human
life represented in the Bishop Payne Divinity
School ?

By 1910, the strong, wise direction of the Rev.
Mr. Bishop had so impressed the Church and made
friends for the great cause which he advocated, that
the American Church Institute felt itself strong
enough to add three other schools to those under
its patronage. Concerning them, Mr. Bishop wrote
as follows in announcing their acceptance : "They
are located in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
where the need of effective work by our Church is
greatest; and, notwithstanding pitifully small re
sources, they have done work of which the Church
may well be proud." We review them briefly.

St. Athanasius', Brunswick, Ga., began its exis
tence as a parochial school in 1884. In 1889, it was
made a diocesan school. In 1910 a charter was
obtained, and St. Athanasius' became a Church In
stitute School. Mr. William Augustus Perry, son
of the rector of St. Mark's Church, Tarboro, N.
C., and a teacher in his father's school, was called
to be Principal. Mr. Perry is a graduate of St.

162

The Education of the Negro

Augustine's, Raleigh, and a B. A. of Yale Uni
versity. His purpose for the school was uncon
sciously expressed in this extract from a letter to
Mr. Bishop: "I find myself arriving nearer and
nearer to the conclusion that all unhappiness, all
failures, all sins, are the result of ignorance some
where — ignorance of self, ignorance of other people,
ignorance of nature, ignorance of God. My peo
ple are accused of general incompetency, lack of
skill, lack of finish; and to a certain degree, justly
so. The cause of it all is that we do not get the
thoroughness of preparation which we ought to
have, and too much is expected of us with such poor
fundamental training. . . . The standards are
not too high nor the pace too great per se. What
we want, what we need, and what we must have,
is more system, more definiteness, and greater thor
oughness in our early training If we

get, in our youth, the thoroughness of training which
the Church can give, we will shake off the stigma
of inefficiency and superficiality." This has been
his consistent effort throughout his eleven years of
administration, and with marked success, as a visit
to the school reveals.

The growth has been steady; and the attendance
here, as in every one of our schools, fully taxes the
capacity of the buildings. Industries are taught to
both boys and girls, which minister to the needs
of the community. The daily chapel, with instruc
tion and lectures, make the spirit of the school-
family.

163

Wanted - Leaders !

St. Mark's School, Birmingham, Ala., was opened
about twenty-six years ago in a rented room, with
eight pupils. A lay-reader, C. V. Augustine, was
teacher, and the mission was directed by the Rev.
J. A. Van Hoose, of Alabama, a perpetual deacon
whose enthusiasm and earnestness and great busi
ness ability have been the chief assets of the grow
ing enterprise. A handsome building, now very
valuable, is the present home of the school. During
these years, the Negroes have contributed over
$25,000 in fees and otherwise to its operation. In
its curriculum, the school correlates literary, indus
trial, and religious education. The story of its
graduates, too long to tell here, forms an interesting
exhibit of splendid influence traveling to remotest
country neighborhoods as well as to city homes and
shops and offices. Plans for the enlargement of
the scope of the work are in the making. The Rev.
C. W. Brooks, a native of Baltimore and, for
twenty-two years, Principal, is a graduate of Ho
ward University and King Hall. He has devoted
his entire life to this splendid school.

The Vicksburg Industrial School, Miss., began as
a parochial school during Bishop Thompson's later
years, under the two Middletons, father and son,
who were successively rectors of St. Mary's, Vicks
burg. A suitable property was bought in 1907,
when the St. Mary's School became twice as large.
Upon reorganization, its name was changed, and
industries suited to community life were introduced.
Archdeacon R. T. Middleton, a rare soul, gentle
and strong and modest, was the pervading spirit

164

The Education of the Negro

whose influence, to the day of his death in August,
1921, was powerful over the two hundred and more
young pupils who annually attended. Here, as
everywhere, the school has won the confidence of
both races, and its graduates are generally making
good everywhere from the Gulf to the Lakes. The
School has its own Principal, but the rector of St.
Mary's, now the Rev. S. A. Morgan, is also rector
of the school, and in charge of religious instruction.
The Fort Valley High and Industrial School,
Georgia, accepted by Bishop Nelson of Atlanta, and
helped by the Institute in 1912, was finally incor
porated as an Institute School in 1919. It had its
beginnings some thirty years ago. Its new life upon
its present broad foundations is the result of the
consecrated wisdom of a Negro layman and his
wife, Mr. and Mrs. H. A. Hunt. They are both
thoroughly practical and constructive teachers, who
know how to relate the theory of books to the prac
tice of industry. Fort Valley is the strategic negro
school of Georgia, both because of its central loca
tion and because of its good plant and its unex
celled history of success. The Principal is an
authority on the sort of education which Fort Val
ley illustrates as no other can in that neighborhood.
His work is of high value in community and State,
as through institutes and conferences he dissem
inates his tested and approved methods. It would
be invidious to select any one avenue of excellence
to illustrate the work of Fort Valley, where all
attain so high an average. Thus guarded, it may
be proper to say that the contribution to the rural

165

Wanted - Leaders !

schools made through graduates equipped to meet
rural problems, alone justifies every dollar of an
nual expenditures.

In 1914, the Rev. Samuel H. Bishop, General
Agent of the Institute, died. His genius as a con
structive critic had worked wonders in the improved
standard of all the schools. The Rev. Robert W.
Patton, D. D., succeeded. him, bringing to the task
other and equally valuable gifts, and the Institute
has gone steadily forward in building upon the now
well-established foundations.

Heretofore, the absorbing purpose of the Insti
tute has been to establish the character of the
schools; not so much to produce uniformity as to
encourage and to strengthen the individual char
acteristics of each, while developing an "Institute
character" in all alike. This had been well accomp
lished by Mr. Bishop. The Institute could now
look out with confidence upon the mission of the
schools to the life of their constituencies. The
supreme need of the time was, and is, for teachers
properly equipped and with adequate development
in Christian character to be the builders of others.
So the schools have been impressed with this great
motive to which the broad culture of class-room
work, domestic trade, and agricultural training all
contribute, to the great advantage of the teacher.
The word "teacher/* as here used, comprehends all
callings, from pulpit to farm, through which others
may be guided. At the same time special care is
taken to train teachers, technically so called, for
service in schools both public and private.

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The Education of the Negro

In 1914, St. Paul's School, Atlanta, was added
to the list of Institute Schools. But in 1916, a dis
astrous fire carried the building away, along with
many city blocks.

In 1920, the Okolona Industrial School, Missis
sippi, and the Gaudet Industrial School near New
Orleans, applied for admission among those under
the Church Institute. The Okolona School was
accepted by the Diocese of Mississippi and by the
Institute, and began life under the new relation,
January 1, 1921. Its founder and strong admin
istrator ever since, is President Wallace A. Battle,
one of the foremost Negroes of his native and
adopted States, Alabama and Louisiana, a Negro
of the Negroes. His father was a landowner, and
on the farm young Battle won the title, "the hard
est worker on Cowikee River." He attended Tal-
ladega College, Alabama; and, still later, Berea
College, Kentucky, where he graduated, with the
B. A. degree. Summer courses in Agricultural Col
leges in Illinois, and in the University of Wisconsin,
further fitted him for his chosen life-work.

"It was at Talladega," he wrote, "ten years
before Okolona was founded that I resolved that
there would be an industrial school with high stand
ards in the most needy State in the Union, if the
Lord would give me strength to finish. I kept my
vow, and Okolona is the result." Nothing has ever
been able to tempt him from this child of his con
secrated love. In the most lean and trying years,
he declined the Presidency of Alcorn, the State
Agricultural College for Negroes, and other flatter-

167

Wanted - Leaders !

ing offers. Through all, and from the beginning,
among white friends, two stand out as unfailing
sympathizers— The Hon. Benjamin J. Abbott, an
old Confederate veteran, after whom the first large
permanent building is named ; and Capt. A. T. Sto-
vall, a distinguished lawyer, and son of another
old Confederate officer. There was prejudice to
be overcome and these two were friends at home
to keep watch as fathers while the infant enterprise
proved its right to live. A disastrous fire soon
swept away the first building. Capt. Stovall sought
home-aid to replace it. Prejudice was not yet dead.
Approaching a group he asked aid. Quickly the
response came from one, a stammerer, "I will
g-g-give you a h-h-h-hundred dollars to b-b-blow the

d d thing up." Many responded in better kind,

the building was restored and the stammering
friend, now a staunch supporter as everybody is,
told this anecdote on himself at the last Commence
ment with the announcement that Battle's School
had converted him completely, and that it had no
warmer friend than himself.

There are four hundred acres of fertile prairie
land bordering the town, which, with the buildings,
is worth quite $180,000. The farm was the best
in the State during the year 1921. The work done
is similar to that at Fort Valley. The industries
are adapted to its prairie home. Its graduates pre
pared for teaching are accorded the Teachers' Cer
tificate of the State, and places are always ready
for them. Many choose agricultural and industrial
pursuits.

168

The Education of the Negro

The Gaudet Normal and Industrial School, named
for its founder, was tendered to Bishop Sessums
of Louisiana, and accepted by the Diocese and by
the Church Institute, between 1920 and 1921. Mrs.
Francis Joseph Gaudet was led to found the school
through the tragedies witnessed in her long and
remarkable work in the interest of prison reform.
Little children of her race, the offspring of crim
inals, were often committed to prison because the
State had no other provision for them. Their
morals were early corrupted in such surroundings.
Mrs. Gaudet championed their cause, and the story
of her fight for reform is one of the heroic romances
of modern times. She brought the matter before
the Prison Reform Association who represented her
cause to the authorities.

"We cannot change conditions; we have no
money," was the answer.

"I vowed," she said, "that I would build the
home and school for these neglected ones if God
would help me."

Shortly after this event, she was appointed to
represent the Woman's Temperance Union in their
International Convention at Edinburgh, Scotland.
Hoping to further the cause of the Home and
School, she accepted, mortgaged her home for the
money needed for the journey, and set forth upon
her double mission, determined to suffer any priva
tions needful to fulfill her mission. After the close
of the Convention, Lady Henry Somerset, President
of the Temperance Union, kept Mrs. Gaudet busy
upon a lecture tour in Europe for six months. She

169

Wanted - Leaders !

returned to New Orleans with about $1,000 towards
the Home and School. Soon a suitable site was
found upon the outskirts of the city, and a first
payment made. The farm of 105 acres now has
three main buildings, a barn and other small indus
trial houses, and a beautiful campus, shaded with
pecans and adorned with shrubs.

"Through God's agents," wrote Mrs. Gaudet,
"the buildings are furnished throughout, even to
an ice pick. The whole plant is worth about
$100,000. I place this plant in the hands of the
Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Bishop Davis
Sessums."

At present the classes run through the 8th grade.
"We teach also domestic art, mattress making,
chair caneing, practical truck farming under an ex
perienced truck gardener, and the rudiments of car
pentry. We have a well equipped blacksmith shop,
but haven't the funds to supply a smith to teach
the boys. We have at present (1922) eighty chil
dren, boys and girls, a majority of them orphans.
I would give every child a good school education
with manual training, and compel each to learn a
trade, for I have observed in my travels through
the State prisons that fully 90% of the prisoners
have no trade. People who have trades are too
busy earning a living to get in trouble."

Two other schools — St. Mary's, Columbia, S. C,
and Hoffman-St. Mary's, Keeling, Tenn. — are as
sisted by the Church Institute, and will doubtless
develop, in time, as have those here briefly described,
when the forward movement of the Church fully

170

The Education of the Negro

reaches them. Of St. Mary's, Bishop Guerry
writes: "Out of it is expected to come a diocesan
school at the close of the Nation-Wide Campaign
for the Church's Mission." Hoffman-St. Mary's
has a rural setting ready to be developed in order
that it may minister to the great negro population
in the Mississippi Valley of Tennessee. These are
two golden opportunities for the Church.

In January, 1922, comes news of the adoption
of St. Philip's School, San Antonio, Texas, by the
Province of the Southwest, this being the only
school for Negroes in that Province. Bishop Cap
ers of West Texas writes: "I have asked the
Church Institute to include this school within the
selected number of southern negro schools that it
fosters. The purpose of St. Philip's is to educate
young negro women in practical learning, domestic
science, etc."

Every one of our schools, whether parochial or
affiliated with the Institute, is crowded. With dou
ble the equipment the attendance would at once be
doubled. There are nine million Negroes in the
South. If an estimate may fairly be based upon
the facts known regarding a half-dozen cities in two
States, then quite one-fifth of the children have no
room provided for them at all. If the overcrowded
condition were relieved, another one-fifth would
have to be provided for. The Church could quad
ruple its parochial-school equipment and still be
unable to meet the demands.

In our Church Institute Schools, we are dealing
with the smaller class who are able to go, some

171

Wanted - Leaders !

of them much beyond the common schools, and
others to the College course, and still others to the
University. From them must come the teachers,
preachers and leaders. In most of our States, from
twenty to thirty per cent of the teachers are not
properly equipped. Here again, to supply the de
mand for good teachers alone, not to mention the
ministers and other "learned professions," we
should quadruple our present provisions. For we
must remember that schools of the character of
ours are few indeed. If this does not constitute a
clear call to service, what indeed does?

172

CHAPTER VII

THE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF
THE NEGRO IN AMERICA

TN approaching the evangelization of the Negro in
America it is necessary to go back to the primi
tive days of the colonists in order to picture the
scene at the beginning.

Whether in the villages or on the plantations, the
large majority of slaveholders felt a genuine com
passion and an honorable responsibility for the
helpless human beings brought under their care.
They felt also an equal helplessness in the higher
realms of guidance of the people who must yet learn
the language of common intercourse. The con
stantly increasing importations introduced a mass
of unacclimated humanity which, as constantly,
postponed the day of this common language and
common intercourse. The America of today knows
something of the difficulties attending a too rapid
immigration. But this modern problem pales be
fore that of the primitive era of the colonies, which,
beset by the new problems of new surroundings,
must yet meet those of their composite social life
within. The slave-master looked out upon the
negro race, after a few years, in its varying stages
from the newly-arrived slave to the domesticated
servant, and saw manifest racial inferiority in every

173

Wanted - Leaders !

capacity through which he habitually measured
worth.

The white settlers of America were distinctly
Christian, though their religion was of widely dif
fering brands. What were they to do as they faced
the new problem of composite life? They did
exactly that which was natural and normal to their
varied religious principles. Those who were enough
of Christians to realize religion as a paramount
duty, at once began to associate the heathen Negro
with their own Christian fai.th. At first, this was
through the family or neighborhood services, prayer
meetings, Sunday schools and the like. By and by,
as life became more organized, churches were built,
and the slave worshipped in his master's church,
and was taught by his master's pastor. In many
cases, the mistress and her daughters were his Sun
day school teachers. In time, plantation churches
were erected primarily for the Negroes, though
generally attended by the Whites.

In this natural way, the Whites sought to main
tain and perpetuate their own Christian culture, and
to impart it to their negro families in such meas
ure as the latter could receive it. It was difficult
enough at best, where preachers and teachers were
few, and where the struggle for a firm foothold, in
a new land, was apt to develop the selfish and the
sordid in human nature. It was increasingly diffi
cult as the age of the deists and agnostics grew
older and more aggressive under foreign and
American leadership. It had its baneful effect upon
the Christianizing of the Negro in producing that

174

Christian Development of the Negro

inexcusable variety of agnosticism which declines
to see God's image in His black children.

Thus naturally, yet under great difficulties, did
the Christianizing of the Negro proceed until the
last years of the seventeenth century, when recorded
efforts become more frequent.

Prior to 1700, the Bishop of London, in charge
of the Church of England in the Colonies, had
attempted to supply the people with pastors, send
ing one or more commissaries; but these efforts
had been only very partially successful.

Miss Helm, in The Upward Path, writes : "The
first organized effort to give Gospel instruction to
the Negroes in the American Colonies, was made
in 1701 by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel in Foreign Parts, a Church of England
society, incorporated under William III. The first
missionary, the Rev. Samuel Thomas, began work
in South Carolina, where he and his successors met
with 'the ready good will of the masters, though
much discouragement was felt because of the diffi
culties of the task, not many of the Negroes under
standing the English tongue.' The zeal of the
Society and its missionaries increased, and in less
than forty years the report was made of a 'great
multitude of Indians and Negroes brought over to
the Christian Faith' in different parts of the coun
try ; and, later, of a flourishing school at Charleston
sending out annually about twenty young Negroes
well instructed in English and the Christian Faith."
Thus the work of the Church among the Negroes
in America owes its organization to the S. P. G.

175

Wanted - Leaders !

Before entering upon the missions of our own
Church, a general view of the Christian efforts made
will be helpful.

The reports made in 1724 to the English Bishops
by the Virginia parish ministers, are evidence that
a few free Negroes in the parishes were permitted
to be baptized, and were received into the Church
when they had been taught the Catechism. This
statement is equally true of the slaves. And what
is true of the Episcopal Church is equally true of
the Presbyterian. In all cases, the earlier converts
were members of the white Churches. Indeed, in
the early days, separate churches for Negroes were
never contemplated.

The Presbyterian mission was begun about 1747
at Hanover, Va., with immediate success. Other
missions were established, and many godly men de
voted their time to work among the slaves both in
the towns and on the plantations. In the Carolina
colonies the same zeal was manifested, though for
the most part the members of this Church dwelt
in the upper counties where slaves were not so
numerous. This, however, presented the occasion
of even closer religious relations. There are no
accurate statistics of converts at hand.

A little later came the activities of the Baptists
and the Methodists, which ultimately swept into
their various folds the vast bulk of the race. The
Baptists, under their policy in which each congrega
tion is a Church in itself, established negro churches
in Georgia and Virginia as early as 1775. In 1793,
the denomination, in its several branches, numbered

176

Christian Development of the Negro

about 18,000, and grew rapidly during the succeed
ing years. In 1860, there were about 400,000 negro
Baptists, not including children and adherents under
instruction which would probably run the total to
more than a million.

The Methodists began work with characteristic
fervor about 1770, and some twenty years later
counted more than 12,000 negro members, all con
nected with the white congregations. In 1860 this
number was increased to 207,776 or, including ad
herents, about a half million souls. The anti-
slavery movements, which more and more estranged
the Methodists, North and South, during the years
1820 to 1844, retarded for a time their work among
the Negroes, but with the division, in 1844, into
Northern and Southern denominations, renewed
activity was attended with great success.

Dr. Phillips in his American Slavery says : "The
Churches which had the greatest influence upon the
Negroes were those which relied least upon ritual
and most upon exhilaration." It is true that the
straightness and suppression of form rigidly applied
to a people whose chief mode of expressing both
social and religious emotions had for centuries, been
through dancing and folk songs, was a transition
too radical and rapid to be widely accepted and ab
sorbed; but certainly the forms of worship had their
lessons. A wise use of both liturgical and extem
poraneous services would probably have produced
better results. The Methodists would probably have
made better Christians, and the Episcopalians more,
had each combined the methods of both.

177
12

Wanted - Leaders !

When education in the South was prescribed, the
free, unliturgical services undoubtedly influenced a
far greater number than could be reached by any
other means.

The moral training of the people was a matter
of the most vital importance. Infractions there
were unquestionably, many of them, and worse than
no help from some of the Whites; but the Church's
steady voice and practice were powerful aids to the
Negroes, and no less powerful restraints to the
Whites. Admixtures were common enough, and
would doubtless have increased had the old regime
held; but the vaster commingling which took place
during the four years of war in the slave territory,
was one of the tragedies of the war.

On plantations belonging to earnest Christians,
the sanctity of the marriage and of family relations
was emphasized. It v/as not the exception but the
rule, in such families, that all marriages were prop
erly solemnized; and, in the case of domestic ser
vants, the mistress or her daughters arrayed the
bride, and the pastor or plantation preacher offi
ciated at the wedding in the church or in the "Big
House" parlor.

Every law of Church and State was conformed
to, and repeated efforts were made by the Church
to have everybody thus conform.*

Pastoral relations were attended with their diffi
culties in the city missions. The Rev. Paul Trapier
writes in 1850: "The minister has still to lament

*For a full discussion of this matter, see the Report of a Committee
of the Diocese of South Carolina, 1859.

178

Christian Development of the Negro

that he can come so little in contact, pastorally, with
his people, owing to the peculiar nature of their
employment in the week and on Sunday. He fain
would urge upon owners the obligation of so
arranging their domestic affairs as to afford to their
servants more opportunity for attendance in the
Lord's House and on the Lord's Day. He can
seldom see them during the week unless they are
sick, nor then except in cases where he feels at lib
erty to go into the yards of their owners for that
purpose. It gives him pleasure, however, to say
that, wherever he has so presumed, his reception
has been respectful and kind, encouraging him to
ask the same liberty more generally."

When one considers the conditions under which
the missions among the Negroes had to grow, the
results were far more due to the grace and mercy
of God than to the wisdom of men. This is said,
not in detraction of the devotion of the men and
women of all denominations who, conforming to
the conditions which perforce robbed them of their
full half-share, wrought their best under them as
co-partners with God.

There was the ever-recurring repression by sus
picious politicians, who feared that religious free
dom might break down the barriers which secured
the abnormal social conditions of slavery, often re
sulting in suppression of the gathering of Negroes
for any purpose. There was the bar of illiteracy,
where knowledge without book-learning, in an era
of books, was sought. There was the exaction of
moral standards, with home conditions conducive

179

Wanted - Leaders !

to none but low ideals. There was the spiritual
culture of the racial tree, with no expectation, for
that era certainly, of its full fruit-bearing in racial
pastors and leaders. There was the agnostic scien
tists and their satellites with the infallible dictum,
"the Negro has no soul," to be grasped at by the
selfish materialist as excuse both for declining re
ligious culture and for abusive treatment of de
fenseless slaves. These, and more besides, made
the conditions under which evangelization in the
South was prosecuted. And in the North, for rea
sons both like and unlike these, there were the same
repressions and far more of prejudice, driving the
Negroes into independent organizations so soon as
law and popular approval would permit.

Under these conditions, it would have been sur
prising indeed if a host of notable examples of
godly leaders had arisen. Nevertheless, God did
raise up examples, in every degree of advancement
possible to them, as illustrations of what the Negro
would be capable of under less fettered conditions.*

It is not easy to follow the growth of the work
of the Episcopal Church, for it is amazing to see
how indifferent our forefathers were, and we are,
to the accuracy of record of activities. In the be
ginning of the eighteenth century, there seem to have
been no records at all in many of the communities,
beyond such a general statement as this : "I have
continued to instruct the Negroes of two planta
tions, and from the good evidently derived from
such labors I am induced to wish that I may be

*See Appendix, Note C.

180

Christian Development of the Negro

enabled to extend my efforts to a much larger num
ber of the same people."

Mr. Bishop, late Secretary of the American
Church Institute for Negroes, mentions seeing, in
the register of the old Bruton Parish, thirty-three
pages consecutively devoted to the entry of the
baptisms of negro servants and children, extending
from 1746 to 1797, and containing 1122 names.
Numerous were the reports made to the Bishop of
London by the missionaries from the mother
Church, of the careful instruction of the servants,
and of the care of the owners to bring them to
baptism. There being no Bishops, of course con
firmation was not in view. Both white and colored
were admitted to the Holy Communion at the dis
cretion of their rectors. What was true of Bruton
Parish is more or less true of the parishes of the
Colonies from Maryland to the Carol inas and
Georgia.

Naturally the first separate congregations were
formed in the northern Colonies. Dr. Bragg of
Baltimore gives an interesting account of the or
ganization, in 1791, of the first congregation of
Negroes — St. Thomas' Parish, Philadelphia — and
of other parishes elsewhere. The white Methodists
of that city, objecting to the intermingling of the
races in their Church of St. George's, set the
Negroes apart. The latter withdrew in 1787, and
formed a Benevolent Society of Negroes, which
prospered. In 1791, the Society desiring to become
a Church, bought a lot, erected a building which
they called after St. Thomas, and, by an almost

181

Wanted - Leaders !

unanimous ballot, voted itself into the Episcopal
Church upon three conditions named in their peti
tion to Bishop White. These were : first, that they
should be received as a body; secondly, that they
should forever have local self-control; and thirdly,
that one of their number should be chosen as lay-
reader and, if found worthy, be regularly ordained
as their minister. Bishop White accepted the con
ditions, and on July 17, 1794, St. Thomas' Church
was formally opened for Services. Absalom Jones
was chosen for ordination, and ordained a deacon
in 1795, and priest shortly after — the first Negro
ordained in the Episcopal Church in America. Of
Jones, Bishop White wrote upon the occasion of his
death, "I do not record the event without a tender
recollection of his eminent virtues, and of his pas
toral fidelity."

In 1819, the negro members of Trinity Parish,
New York, under the leadership of Peter Williams
and others, and with the consent of Bishop Hobart,
united themselves in the new negro Church of St.
Philip. The following year, Williams was or
dained, and became the first negro rector in the
Diocese. ''There was a great educational need, and
he was the man who led the successful movement
for a Colored High School in those early days.
When the parish was denied representation in the
Diocesan Convention (the members) quietly elected
as their representative to that body the Hon. John
Jay of the white race who was their real and sympa
thetic representative until he had succeeded in re
versing the policy."

182

Christian Development of the Negro

In June, 1824, St. James' First African Church,
Baltimore, was organized by the Rev. William
Levington. On October 10, 1826, the corner-stone
was laid, and on March 31, 1827, the congregation
occupied their new church which was that day con
secrated by Bishop Kemp. "It was a day of peculiar
significance to the descendants of the African race
for all times to come," writes Dr. Bragg,, "for it
was the first occasion anywhere in the South, where
a local branch of any of the existing white Churches
had been initiated among the people of the African
race, with all the powers of self-government, as well
as with an educated pastor, of the same race as the
congregation." The young rector was ordained
priest in Philadelphia in 1828 by Bishop White, and
the parish was incorporated the following year.

That the association of free and slave Negroes
did not move always in the paths of pleasantness,
is illustrated by the opening of St. James' to both
classes, over the objection of the free. The earnest
young rector seems to have been amply strong to
compose the objectors, and to inspire them with a
sense of duty to their less fortunate fellow-mem
bers. Among the fruits of his short ministry were
the Rev. William Douglass, and the Rev. Eli
Worthington Stokes, the former the first Negro to
be ordained in Maryland (1836) and the latter the
first to be ordained in St. James' Church (1843).

In 1843 Christ Church for Negroes — the first
colored church in New England — was organized in
Providence, R. I., by the Rev. Mr. Crummell ; and,
in the following year, St. Luke's, New Haven,

183

Wanted - Leaders !

Conn., by the Rev. Mr. Stokes. It will be recalled
that both of these devoted negro priests later gave
their lives as leaders of the Church in Liberia.

Chronologically, Calvary Church, Charleston, S.
C, organized in 1849 by the Rev. Paul Trapier, was
the next to be built especially for the Negroes, as
also to relieve the congestion in the white churches
of the city. Because of the law against the assem
blage of Negroes alone, a few white members were
enrolled and always in attendance. The building of
the church was at once begun. An unsuccessful
attempt was made to destroy the church under con
struction, Mr. Trapier calmly announcing to the
mob, "You will tear it down only over my dead
body." After a public meeting at which the full
purpose was explained, the building progressed
peacefully, and the good work has continued to this
time. Calvary Church bore the relation to the
churches in Charleston that would now be defined
by the term, a City Mission.

About 1850, St. Matthews, Detroit, Mich., was
established under the leadership of the Rev. William
C. Munro. The anti-Negro sentiment soon operated
to the closing of its doors. The wave passing, it
was again revived ; but lived only a few years. Yet
during its brief career, it served one purpose of
supreme worth, for here the Rev. Theodore Holley,
later Bishop of Haiti, received part of his training,
and here he was ordained.

These parochial establishments — probably the
only ones in America founded on so ambitious a
scale — together with St. Stephen's, Savannah, in

184

Christian Development of the Negro

1856, represented the beginnings of the purely racial
churches before the Civil War; the initiation, in
most cases, of local self-government; and the
models of those to come later.*

It would not be profitable to describe in detail
the work of every Colony and Diocese in the period
before Emancipation, where the sameness of method
and result so inevitably blends with monotony. The
work in South Carolina, completely illustrative of
all, will serve as a sample, and others may be briefly
summarized.

South Carolina illustrates, more completely than
any other, the features of work employed by all the
Southern States. f Happily, there is almost a con
tinuous record from which to draw. The Chron
icles of St. Mark's Parish is especially valuable as
a source-book. From it we learn that from the be
ginning, so soon as the Negroes were taught the
language, Christian instruction and Baptism fol
lowed, wherever agreeable to the Negroes. This
was provided for by Article 107 of The Code of
Laws. No question was raised during the Pro
prietary Government. When the Royal Govern
ment was established, the question was raised as to
the propriety of such instructions of the slaves, but
the law stood as reaffirmed by the Legislature of
1712.$

In 1764, the Rev. Levi Durand of St. John's
Parish, baptized the first child recorded as born of

*See Appendix, Note D.
tSee Appendix, Note E.
JSee Appendix, Note F.

185

Wanted - Leaders !

negro Christian parents. This marks the beginning
of a new era for the race ; for until Christian faith,
the instinct of prayer, and the habit of belief, come
to be the heritage of a people, making the atmos
phere of life, it is not possible to begin to build the
generations into the great Temple as true and tried
living stones. True, such habit, such atmosphere,
may become in time but the empty shell of life that
is dead; this is the danger against which Christians
have had always to guard. Where Christian faith
is surrounded by heathen superstition, it is thrown
upon guard, if the faith be true. Its guard is apt
to become increasingly relaxed as the atmosphere
which surrounds it is of its own making. But this
latter is, none the less, the very condition of prog
ress, where faith is truly alive. Hence it was only
when the Christian Negroes could make the Chris
tian conditions in which to rear their children, that
the conversion of the race could be said to have be
gun. From that year, 1764, the Christians of a
second generation increased with their numbers, and
vastly contributed to the better and more wholesome
conditions to which their new brethren came.*

That the disposition to evangelize the Negroes
gained complete ascendency with the success of
efforts, is attested by the report of the "Committee
of the Religious Instruction of Colored Persons,"
published in The Gospel Messenger of May, 1838.f
"St. John's, Colleton. The preaching upon the
plantations has been continued, with increasing evi-

*See Appendix, Note G.

tFor Resolutions contained in this Report, see Appendix, Note H.

186

Christian Development of the Negro

dence of the benefit resulting, both to master and
servant, from this branch of duty. The interest of
the master in the religious instruction of his slaves,
may be known from the fact that, on most, if not
all, of the plantations visited, but half the usual
task is given on the days on which Divine Service
is appointed to be held. During the summer, a class
of 44 colored children was regularly taught (orally)
for an hour every day, by members of the Rector's
family."

By the middle of the century such reports are the
rule; there were fewer rectors of distinctly white
parishes than of distinctly negro missions.

In 1849, Bishop Gadsden, after noting in his ad
dress to the Convention, thirteen visitations "having
more especial reference to the class of servants,"
adds this comment : "In my visitations, nothing was
more gratifying to behold than the chapels which
have been erected on plantations at central points
for the more especial accommodation of the blacks.
There are now at least ten such chapels. May they
be greatly multiplied, and the day not distant when
each large plantation, or two or more smaller
ones united, shall have a Chaplain and daily
services !"

In that year, of the 430 communicants in St.
Philip's, Charleston, 138 were colored; in St.
John's, Colleton, of the 456, the colored numbered
401. These relative proportions of numbers rep
resent fairly two types of mixed congregations. In
1850, the proportion of communicants in the Dio
cese was 2751 white and 3168 negro. In 1857, as

187

Wanted - Leaders !

though in answer to the fervent prayer of his prede
cessor, Bishop Davis reports to the Convention,
"The whole number of persons confirmed since the
last Convention is : white 245, colored 628. I have
been endeavoring to collect statistics of our opera
tions among the colored people, but they are yet
imperfect. There are, in the Diocese, 45 Chapels
and places of worship for the slaves. There are
about 150 lay persons, male and female, engaged
in giving to them catechetical instruction. There
must be 1 50 congregations, and catechumens in pro
portion to these congregations and to the number of
teachers. This is as near as I can now ascertain."
What an answer, in seven years, to Bishop Gads-
den's prayers!

But the increase in baptisms far surpassed other
growth, and more and more Christian parents were
bringing their children to the front. In 1858, here
are some figures: In old St. Philip's, Charleston,
1 colored adult baptized, 18 colored children, 27
white, — manifestly proportionate to the Christians
of the two races. In St. Stephen's, where the
Church is not as long established and Services are
less frequent, adults baptized, 119 colored ; children,
1.1 white, 13 colored. In All Saints, Waccamaw,
Mr. Glennie, the pastor of the Negroes for so many
years, reports 52 colored adults baptized; children,
white 10, colored 186. In his postscript, Mr.
Glennie wrote, "Divine services for the Negroes on
19 plantations, 614 times; largest class of negro
children 70, smallest 6."

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Christian Development of the Negro

Among the postscripts to the report of St.
Philip's, Charleston, is this one: "In the amount
of missionary contributions is included $150 from
the colored members of St. Philip's (and a few of
St. Michael's) for the support of an African
teacher; also $75 from the Bible Class of the assist
ant Minister, for St. Philip's Scholarship in the
Cape Palmas Orphan Asylum." This is not an
isolated instance of the contributions of both slave
and free for Missions.

The Rev. Dr. Taylor, missionary to the Negroes
of Bluffton, about the same time, furnishes this tes
timony to the eagerness of the little Sunday School
scholars, which is very characteristic: "In the dis
charge of my duties, I found much to interest me;
the children were for the most part attentive and
disposed to learn. I was recently quite gratified in
meeting with a gentleman who owned one of the
plantations under my care ; he informed me that the
children were very anxious, when he went among
them, to repeat hymns, etc., which I had taught
them, and for this purpose would often follow him."

By 1860, Bishop Davis was practically blind,
though he continued to discharge his duties almost
until his death in 1871. His journal for 1860, read
by his son, contains a succession of confirmations
of White and Colored, more of the latter than the
former. And then came frightful war and its after
math, with results in church life much like those
in the industrial life of the Negro.*

*See Appendix, Note I.

189

Wanted - Leaders !

A typical picture of the religious work of this
period is given in the words of Mrs. Essie Collins
Mathews.

"High above the Waccamaw river, stands
the Weston Chapel, beautifully located. Through
the years, I see the picture. It is built of cypress,
has fine stained-glass windows, and in every way is
a house well suited to the worship of the Lord. Ad
joining, are a thousand acres of rice, the rice-mill,
and other buildings needed by the planter. Hun
dreds of slaves are at work in the fields. When the
clock in the Chapel tower strikes the hour for
Evening Prayer, the many slaves start for the
Chapel, and it is soon well-filled. The master is a
lay-reader, and appears in his snowy vestments, and
begins the Service we all love so dearly — 'The Lord
is in His holy temple ; let all the earth keep silence
before Him.' Then comes the General Confession,
and the people drop on their knees. Do you not
see them ? Many are devoutly kneeling, the women
with bright-colored kerchiefs on their heads and
the men with their heads bared. The soft sunlight
shines through the stained-glass windows and fills
the Chapel with beautiful colors. The mocking
birds are singing softly in the live-oak trees just
outside. The air is filled with the fragrance of the
yellow jasmine, while the master joins with his
black people in the prayer, 'Almighty and most
merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from
Thy ways like lost sheep.' At the close of the Ser
vice they sing, as only Negroes can sing, and with
that quality of tone none others have :

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Christian Development of the Negro

'Through the day Thy love has spared us ;
Hear us ere the hour of rest ;
Through the silent watches guard us,
Let no foe our peace molest.
Jesus, Thou our guardian be.
Sweet it is to trust in Thee.'

They pass out of the Chapel silently, with a smile
and a kind word for each from the master who is
at the door to say 'Good night.5 !

"The picture passes from our sight, and the
words of the hymn can no longer be heard. We
turn to the Chapel as it is today. Most of those old
slaves now lie in the graves near by; and the good
master, in the parish church-yard not far away."*

With this example in detail, it may suffice to say
that, before the war, a like activity characterized
every Diocese of the South Atlantic and Gulf
States, including Tennessee and Arkansas, and to
a less extent Kentucky and Texas where slavery
was not prevalent. There were none without planta
tion churches, and few parishes without negro mem
bers, and Sunday Schools for the children.

Such were some of the results of the labors of the
early white missionaries. It is needless to add that
no such results could have accrued had not the
Negro himself possessed qualities out of which
character may be built.

At the close of the Civil War, with one consent
the Dioceses of the South set themselves the task
of building upon the reduced foundations. No one
dreamed of a laissez faire policy. The leader spoke,

*See Appendix, Note J.

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Wanted - Leaders !

and the Church, with reduced resources, responded.
Some of the Bishops thought the old machinery
sufficient for the new day; but most people recog
nized that the birth of the new era meant the change
of the old order. The Negroes themselves had
spoken by their actions, in refusing any longer to
attend the white man's Services. Plainly this in
dicated a desire for churches of their own, with
local self-government such as had already been
found palatable in political life. More or less of
separation for the races in church had to be made,
and more and more as time passed.

Gradually, as means could be provided, separate
parishes were organized in the larger cities, begin
ning with St. Mark's Parish, Charleston, in 1866.
At first, white rectors were the rule south of Balti
more. Occasionally, as was true of the pre-war
period in South Carolina, negro lay-readers were
licensed; but plainly, and quite naturally, the
Negroes wanted their own pastors from their own
people.

From the establishment of the first negro church
in Philadelphia, in 1791, among the free Negroes,
the consistently prevailing demand of the freedmen
has been for churches and pastors of their own.
They first demanded this, and themselves suggested
it to their white Bishops. Practically all of the
Bishops met this desire with sympathy, Bishops
Atkinson and Howe being foremost in meeting this
natural ambition of the Negroes.

In 1873, Bishop Howe thus addressed his Con
vention: "Let a Missionary jurisdiction be erected

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Christian Development of the Negro

by the General Convention with express reference
to these people, and let a Missionary Bishop be con
secrated, who shall give his whole time and thought
to this work; who, as the executive, not of a single
Diocese but of the entire Church, shall organize
congregations, provide them with Church schools
and pastors, and in due time raise up from among
the colored people themselves, and to minister to
themselves, deacons and priests who shall be edu
cated men, and competent to the work of the min
istry, and I cannot but think good would result."

The germ of this suggestion had been already
discussed. The Methodist and Baptist Churches
had been divided on racial lines, negro churches
being provided; but the Episcopal Church had no
such easy solution. The question was, rather, how
to secure, without a division, what the Negroes
manifestly desired. The General Convention of
1874, in its capacity as the Board of Missions, re
jected the proposal of Bishop Howe. Its acceptance
might have saved long years of controversy and
vacillation — controversy over negro suffrage in its
Councils — vacillation of opinions, Negroes first ask
ing separation for greater freedom in self-govern
ment, then demanding equal representation in Coun
cil; Whites first fearful of separation, then demand
ing separation in Council.

Meanwhile, the separate organization of Metho
dist and Baptist Churches, with freer worship and
complete self-government, attracted and held most
of the Episcopalians who had wandered from the
fold, while others conformed to the Reformed

13 193

Wanted - Leaders !

Episcopal Church about 1874 to 1875. To this
day, the pride of the Negroes in the "Great Negro
Churches" with their own Bishops in the case of
the Methodists, and, in the case of both Metho
dists and Baptists, their own strong leaders utterly
independent of a responsibility shared by the white
race, is a powerful motive in holding them to these
Churches. This very great achievement which they
have accomplished for themselves through sacrifices
that white people of the same age know only faintly,
is a source of unending satisfaction to them, and
an evidence of their ability to inaugurate and main
tain great enterprises. They feel this profoundly,
and are drawn, with the cords of loyalty, to that
which is their very own, unshared by others.

The modern era of Church activity in the South
follows the reconstruction era, beginning about
1880. It is, however, about this same date that the
larger activities in the North also began.

In the North, where the Negroes were compara
tively few, some became members of white parishes.
Perhaps an equal number were gathered in the six
churches built especially for them prior to the Civil
War. Of these six, however, two became extinct
very quickly — Christ Church, Providence, R. L, and
St. Matthew's, Detroit, Mich. And this was the
condition up to 1880, save that the negro members
of white and negro parishes increased somewhat in
the larger cities.

In the South, before the war, from Maryland
downward and westward, only three parishes were
established for the Negroes — St. James', Baltimore ;

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Christian Development of the Negro

Calvary, Charleston; St. Stephen's, Savannah — all
with unbroken history to this day. There were in
numerable parishes in rural communities, about fifty
in South Carolina alone. Nearly every parish also
had negro members who numbered many thousands.
After the war, the work was a wreck, and the mem
bers of the whole South were counted only in hun
dreds.

And here, in parentheses, we of the Episcopal
Church should recall our lasting gratitude to the
American Missionary Society of the Congregational
Church. During the era of reconstruction, when
our Church could do well-nigh nothing with and
for the Negro, that Society, with holy purpose and
with only the natural mistakes of a people feeling
their way toward a new problem, and at indescrib
able personal sacrifice of the workers, established
schools, preached the Gospel, and held high the lan
tern of the Good Shepherd before the bewildered
eyes of a hopelessly confused race. Through their
work chiefly, were the leaders of the era raised up.
Hampton was founded mainly under their auspices,
and, until now, has been administered under their
able and devoted missionaries in complete Christian
courtesy to other Churches. Schools were estab
lished by them from Hampton around to Fiske, and
though the South was, from the first, suspicious of
their influence, they have long since won the con
fidence and regard of every soul who knows them
by their fruits.

If we should follow the unhappy controversies
of the ten years beginning about 1873, there would

195

Wanted - Leaders !

be disclosed ample reason for the continued es
trangement of the Negro from the Church. His
membership in the Church was never questioned.
This, with all of spiritual privilege, was always his
right. But the vexed question of the franchise was
an ecclesiastical as well as a political matter; and,
as always, each side had its advocates and its op
ponents. To the Negro, the question of represen
tation in Conventions became important, as affect
ing the standing of his membership in the Church.
Until that question was settled, he stood aloof.
Generally, save in South Carolina and Arkansas,
his right to representation was accorded, though
there was some little variety in practical adjust
ment. South Carolina established, in 1888, a sep
arate Archdeaconry where voice and vote, and con
ference with the Bishop would be free.

There was also the question of the fitness of the
Negro, so new from slavery, for the office of priest.
Prior to 1865, only fourteen Negroes had been or
dained to our ministry, and a large proportion of
these had Liberia or Haiti as an objective. None
had been ordained in any Diocese south of Mary
land. It would have been a totally new thing, and
the South looked upon it with skepticism. Here,
again, however, there were two sides, with constant
controversy, resulting in reluctance on the part of
Negroes to apply for Holy Orders.

True, the conviction that only negro clergy could
shepherd the thousands of stray sheep back to the
fold, and the consequent necessity of providing
such clergy, early overcame the hesitation of the

196

Christian Development of the Negro

Bishops; but, even so, Standing Committees felt
neither pressure as did their Bishops. Neverthe
less, of the 27 clergy ordained from 1866 to 1880,
there were seventeen ordained in the South, eight
in the North, and two in the West. This small
number, while serving to reassure the Negroes of
their welcome to the ordained ministry, did not
bring back the wanderers to the fold in large num
bers.

It was through the earnest devotion of men like
Jos. S. Atwell of Virginia, William H. Wilson of
Nebraska, Henry L. Phillips of Pennsylvania, J.
H. M. Pollard of Virginia, Thomas W. Cain of
Texas, Cassius M. Mason of Missouri, William
Cheshire of Tennessee, that the seeds of a later
harvest were sown in this widely scattered vine
yard. With perhaps one exception, these early
ordinants were the direct fruits of our post-war
schools described in another chapter. Through
these schools, White and Black together set them
selves the common task of supplying the native
pastors for whom our people yearned. Ever since,
the ministry has been recruited almost exclusively
from St. Augustine's, RaFeigh — sole survivor of the
old training schools; and from St. Paul's, Lawrence-
ville, and later ones.

The decade from 1880 to 1890 yielded the largest
proportionate increase of clergy in the history of
the Church, most of whom were prepared by those
older schools. Many of these became the founders
of parishes or schools or both.* With the access of

*See Appendix, Note K.

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Wanted - Leaders !

the strong, earnest men of the '80s, there came new
life into the Church's ministry to the Negroes.

The Church Commission for Work among Col
ored People was created by General Convention in
1886. The next year, a report was published of
the work in all the Southern Dioceses, as well as in
those of Springfield, Kansas, Missouri and Ne
braska, where first beginnings had been made. In
most of them, the Bishops were those who had seen
the well-nigh complete collapse of the work of the
former period. The tone of their reports is in
marked contrast with those of ten or twelve years
before; nearly all of them describe plans that only
buoyant hope could contemplate. The display is
pitiful in view of the great number of missions
thirty years earlier.

Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and West
Virginia report one mission each, a new beginning
in each case on the ruined foundations of the past.
Bishop Wilmer of Alabama wrote with new hope
of the revived Good Shepherd, Mobile: "This is

a work of good promise The school in

connection with the Church, and taught by one of
my deaconesses, is a success. We are beginning to
connect with it an Industrial School; also an Or
phanage and Sisterhood." The latter were never
realized, but the Church has persisted and two
others added. The congregations in Texas had in
creased to four, and in Mississippi to five. Florida
and North Carolina had been rather behind the
South Atlantic Dioceses in the old days, with many
members in white Churches, but with few separate

198

Christian Development of the Negro

chapels. Their reports showed a strong founda
tion for the new times.

Florida had established churches in the upper and
older half of the State, and missions at strategic
points all the way to Key West. There were more
congregations in each of the two Florida Dioceses,
in 1922, than there were in the whole State in 1887.

North Carolina had been divided in 1884. St.
Augustine's School had done great work. The old
Diocese reported thirteen organized churches with
"several admirable openings if we could feel secure
of the means for inaugurating and carrying on the
work in these new fields." In East Carolina there
were five colored congregations, which were suffi
ciently organized to have regular buildings of their
own. In both Dioceses, a plan of work, including
parochial schools, is clearly before the Bishops and
their workers. In 1895, the District of Asheville
was set off. In 1922, there were, in the whole
State, 39 congregations — more than double the
number in 1887.

Maryland had not yet been divided. There were
eight churches reported. And now there are quite
as many in each of the Dioceses, with great growth
of numbers, especially in Baltimore and Washing
ton City.

Kentucky, then undivided, had three churches,
with schools at Louisville and at Henderson. Now
Kentucky and Lexington have three each.

South Carolina is beginning to overcome the
earlier overwhelming losses. There were eleven
congregations, with parochial schools for three of

199

Wanted - Leaders !

them. These had grown, in 1922, to twenty-five,
with thirteen schools.

Tennessee had five missions, with a school for
the members of Emmanuel, Memphis. These have
doubled.

Virginia, reporting also for Southern Virginia,
numbers six congregations and fourteen schools.
Since then, the churches of the Virginia Dioceses
have grown to forty-three, and the members almost
proportionately.

In Georgia, the mission work was receiving won
derful impetus from the Rev. A. J. P. Dodge, the
benefactor of the negro work, recently come to the
coast region.* In 1887, there were six congrega
tions, the remnants of once flourishing missions.
Mr. Dodge pushed his work out to county after
county, ably seconded by the Rev. D. Watson Winn.
Ruined churches were restored, and new ones built ;
existing schools were strengthened, and new ones
founded. In many cases, they discovered old mem
bers of the Church upon whom to build the younger
generation. Georgia has been divided since then,
and the six churches of the old Diocese have ex
panded into seven in the Diocese of Atlanta, and
fifteen in the Diocese of Georgia of today. Into
all of them, the devoted spirit of Dodge is built.

Another region which is quite typical of the
growth during this modern period, deserves our
study in short detail, i. e., North Carolina, with its
several Dioceses. Here, as everywhere, the new

*See Appendix, Note L.

200

Christian Development of the Negro

life grew out of the members of the old dormant
fire which still smouldered. Nearly every church
of today began with a few Negroes who clung
faithfully, in spite of destruction all around them,
to the white parishes, refusing to join the purely
racial Churches as the vast majority of their fel
lows did.

"St. Cyprian's, New Bern, and St. Mark's, Wil
mington, were the result of the consecrated vision
of Bishop Atkinson who sought to preserve to the
Church the fruit of her anti-bellum labors." The
former was established in 1866, and was ministered
to, for many years, by the rectors of the parish
Church, in which the first members of St. Cyprian's
were reared. I quote from a manuscript story of
the Church among the Negroes kindly furnished
by Bishop Darst and the Executive Secretary of
East Carolina. "It is impossible to estimate the
value of the influence this school has had upon the
life of the colored people of New Bern. It would
be hard to find a native New Bernian above 35 years
of age who did not at some time attend this school."
The old landmark did its work, and its site is now
the Parish Playground, still serving usefully. The
character of the parish has grown in grace, all its
present members having been trained in the Church
and in the old "Red School." Its contributions to
the Nation-Wide Campaign were $1000 in 1921.

St. Mark's, Wilmington, was founded by the
Rev. C. O. Brady about 1872. The parish is dis
tinguished as the mother of clergy. The Parish

201

Wanted - Leaders !

School, with domestic science, has been a perennial
garden of Church growth.

The banner parish of the Eastern Diocese is St.
Joseph's, Fayetteville, founded by the Rev. Dr.
Huske and the colored members of the old parish.
It also led the negro churches of the South in the
Nation- Wide Campaign to which it gave $1300 in
1920.

St. Luke's, Tarboro, was organized in 1872 by
Dr. Cheshire, rector of the old parish of Calvary
and father of the present Bishop of North Caro
lina. In 1881, the Rev. John W. Perry became rec
tor. The parish grew, and a school was opened
which has trained many good Churchmen and some
teachers.

St. Michael's, Charlotte, owes its birth and early
nurture to Bishop Cheshire who, when rector of St.
Peter's, opened the Mission for colored people. A
school was opened, children were trained, parents
followed them, the church was completed, and an
excellent plant provided equipment for a working
congregation. Four men were sent forth into the
ministry.

Another parish — the combined work of white and
colored priests — is St. John's, Edenton. Founded
by the Rev. Dr. Drane, about 1880, the Mission
was able to build its church in 1886. The parish
school has sent out many successful pupils who
have taken high stand in their vocations. Direct
fruits of Edenton, the mother of the district, are
the negro parishes of St. Philip's, Elizabeth City;
St. Paul's, Washington; and St. Mary's, Belhaven.

202

Christian Development of the Negro

The story of these years of re-establishment in
North Carolina is one of beautiful sympathy be
tween white and negro workers, each ready to build
upon the foundation of the other. Since then, the
same sympathetic co-operation has attended the ex
tension of the missions. Bishop Delany has been
the founder of more than half of the existing
churches in what is now, under Bishop Cheshire, his
Diocese. He was consecrated Bishop Suffragan of
North Carolina on October 18th, 1918, and enjoys
the complete confidence of his brethren of the South.

Arkansas had no report for the Commission in
1887. She had not yet risen from the ashes of de
struction. The Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Demby,
writes : "The history of the Church work among
the Negroes of Arkansas is very meagre; in fact,

there is nothing really reliable outside of

certain families who were members before the Civil
War, during which old relations were broken up,
due to the horrors of the war and the new condi
tions."

Bishop Pierce and his family had opened St.
Philip's, Little Rock, about 1890. Under succes
sive archdeacons in Bishop Brown's day, missions
had been begun in Fort Smith, Pine Bluff, New
Port, Hot Springs, and Conway. Most of them
were without any substantial foundation, nor had
they the equipment with which to establish churches.
However, ground had been broken when Bishop
Winchester came in 1911. He at once saw that the
problem was unlike that in other Dioceses to the
eastward, where, very generally, a remnant of the

203

Wanted - Leaders !

old, well-trained members of the white congrega
tions were the foundation of the missionary renais
sance. So soon as the Canon on Suffragans was
passed by General Convention, he proposed its appli
cation in Arkansas; and, in 1918, the Rev. Dr.
Demby was elected and consecrated. He at once
entered upon his task as apostle to his race. He
had at first to overcome the natural feeling of in
security which intermittent ministry had engen
dered.

One of the chief obstacles to foundation work in
this new era, has been the uncertain income for sup
port, resulting in long vacancies. The natural conse
quence has been to create in Negroes, interested in
Holy Orders, the sort of skepticism wrhich asks,
"If I join you, what next? Am I to be left shep-
herdless and isolated in a Church without com
panionship?" The old policy of begging an income
year by year made this very generally inevitable.
To overcome that handicap is no easy task. There
were many others. General Convention had issued
a challenge to the faith of the Church. Arkansas
was first to accept it in the name of the whole
Church; and, in her material weakness, sent forth
the call of faith to Bishop Demby to lead his people
in the trans-Mississippi Province.

Two years ago, Bishop Demby sent forth a re
view of the field, and a call to the Church to give
him means to occupy it. Of Arkansas, he wrote:
"There are seventy-five counties in the State ; in six
of them, there are more colored than white people;
Crittendon, 71% ; Phillips, 78% ; Desha, 79% ; Jef-

204

Christian Development of the Negro

ferson, 71%; St. Francis, 68%; Woodruff, 58%.
In only three of them has work been begun, though
there are missions in several of the counties of the
interior. We have scarcely begun to enter the great
''Black Belt" which is ready and ripe for the har
vest. What we need is substantial help to do the
work to which the Church has called and conse
crated us."

The Bishop is facing the whole task as it relates
to American life, just as his brother Bishop, De-
lany, is facing it on the Atlantic coast. "The Epis
copal Church is facing the American race-problem

bravely and courageously and, in harmony

with the program of the Sociological Congress, is
doing it rationally and in the spirit of Christianity.
There is no question as to its attitude against peon
age, lynching, riots, mob violence, and court injus
tices. The Bishops and priests of the Church are
one against all wrongs to the Negroes or any other
race unit." He sees the call of the Church to con
tribute, in the best and holiest way, to the harmony
of American life. He finds in this the surest ground
of that reassurance of his race without which efforts
are futile.

Much more, there is, but this may suffice to ex
hibit the breadth of vision with which our negro
Bishops are viewing their great task. They are
both in the heart of the Negroes' home, east and
west. As few men can, they know the problems
and difficulties, the achievements and hopes.

Turning now to the northern and western Dio
ceses, we find a corresponding growth in the number

205

Wanted - Leaders !

of congregations, with far greater proportionate in
crease in members, and in self-supporting parishes.
The building of new churches fairly well marks
the progress of the diffusion of population. Before
1880, the Negroes of the North and West were few
in number, and only about ten congregations in the
States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, and Cali
fornia, had been formed. A gradual transfusion
then began, most of which could, for a time, be
cared for by the white and the existing negro par
ishes. From that date to 1890, ten more congrega
tions were formed. This is from Dr. Bragg's
Manual of Afro-American Church Work, dated
1910. "Since 1900, the period of greatest influx of
population from the South, 45 congregations have
been formed in 29 Dioceses, North and West. The
Church in the North and West has been quite as
much alive to the duties and privileges of negro
work as has the South, to which the many millions
are native."

The next development in the upper Diocese came
in New Jersey, long after the first establishments.
About 1860, St. Philip's, Newark (the first in the
Diocese and the last before the Civil War) was
founded. So the two Dioceses in that State were
ready to meet the new people who began to flow
northward in the '80s, when St. Augustine's, Cam-
den, was founded in 1888, and St. Augustine's,
Asbury Park, five years later. These became the
vantage points from which the present ten parishes
have been formed. Sometimes the initiative came

206

Christian Development of the Negro

from the white parish, as in the case of Epiphany,
Orange, first opened by the Rev. Alexander Mann
when rector of Grace Church.

In 1865, St. Philip's, Buffalo, was opened, and
the western Diocese had a home for its limited negro
population. St. Thomas,' Chicago, was founded in
1880, and is one of the largest parishes of the North
Central States. In 1883, St. Michael's, Cairo, Illi
nois, was opened by the parish church, and the Rev.
J. B. Williams, just ordered deacon, served as rec
tor. The site was strategic, at the head of the vast
population of the Mississippi Valley. In 1885,
came St. Philip's, Omaha, Nebraska; and St.
Simon's, Topeka, Kansas, which, with St. Augus
tine's, Kansas City, opened the near west for the
later migrations. The next year, St. Augustine's,
Boston, initiated the separate congregations in Mas
sachusetts for the colored members of parishes
which were becoming overcrowded. These were
followed by missions in Southern Ohio, Delaware,
Minnesota, Ohio, and Indianapolis, through the
years to 1900. Thus the Negroes in their increas
ingly widespread movements found Church homes
in nearly all of the centres to which they were being
attracted.*

In the summer of 1921, The Church Advocate
published a statement of comparative statistics of
growth in the Provinces. The figures, probably of
1920, from the entire Church, were, Clergy 155,
Congregations 283, Communicants 30,113. The
congregations now number 289, and probably the

*See Appendix, Note M.

207

Wanted - Leaders !

increase of clergy and members corresponds. Then
follow these paragraphs : "In the year 1907, in the
Southern States included in the Province of Se-
wanee, there were reported 5,719 colored communi
cants. Fourteen years later, 1921, within the same
territory, there are reported 6,393 colored communi
cants, or a total gain in fourteen years of 674. In
1907, the New England States, New York, New
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, reported in the aggregate
4,413 colored communicants. In 1921, this same
group of States report 11,601 communicants, an in
crease, in that period, of 7,188."

These figures are probably very nearly accurate;
and they suggest an inquiry to which no simple yet
complete answer can be given. Two explanations
stand out above others : first, that the reasons which
have retarded the growth of the Episcopal Church
in the South are the same for White and Black
alike, i. e., its ultra-conservative character, involving
an unconsciously aristocratic spirit which may often
seem cold and forbidding. The second explanation
may be found in the economic pull toward the busier
North, drawing the most enterprising element of
both races. From the ministry, through business
circles, to the industrial trades, our northern cen
tres have a large percentage of southern life. This
is especially and increasingly true of our negro life
during the years since 1900. The Episcopal Church
is cultural to a marked degree; her Services not
only encourage but impart culture. Her negro
members quickly become a desirable class. Thus
the experience of Mississippi during the past twelve

208

Christian Development of the Negro

years may be somewhat exceptional, but it is still
typical of the whole South. Had we held our in
crease through confirmations and through births in
the Church, the number today would be more than
trebled. In the one war-year of greatest migration,
the colored congregations lost quite 50% of their
numbers; these migrants are now to be found very
generally in the churches all the way from Chicago
to Boston.

It is sometimes very discouraging to our colored
clergy to see a fine, sturdy nucleus of a strong par
ish evaporate in a few weeks. The loneliness of it
is intense. All honor and profound respect for the
men who hold their posts on a progressive picket-
line, standing alone, sometimes, until recruits answer
the call! They are at the training-stations, sending
on the trained to the larger centres, North and
South.

In the Government Report on Negro Migration,
1916-1917, Dr. James H. Dillard gives a striking
illustration furnished by the reports of the Durham
School, Philadelphia. "I thought that the new en
rollment would probably afford some information as
to new arrivals. The Principal had enrolled the new
pupils on sheets containing fifty names, and had
been careful to enter opposite each name the place
from which the pupil had come. I took six sheets at

random and found among the new pupils

between forty and fifty per cent from the South."

The Church is one, and the one lesson of prac
tical value from this recital is that the Church be

14 209

Wanted - Leaders !

ever watchful and ready in pastoral care of a flock
wandering far from accustomed folds, and diligent
to conserve the fruit of a common sacred task.
With this as the over-mastering motive, the scouts
on outpost duty will rejoice equally with the mob
ilized army in close array, that all stand steadfast
to duty.

210

CHAPTER VIII
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

A YOUNG professor, after reading portions of
the manuscript here printed, asked, "Where is
this leading to ? Suppose the Negro is evangelized
and educated as thoroughly as your ideal for him
seems to desire, what will happen, and what is to
be his relation to the white people in this country?"
That has been the white man's question ever since
the possible consequences of his bringing the Ne
groes to the new land were brought home to him.
The question was faced with impelling emphasis as
the Fathers of the Republic contemplated the pur
poses and ideals of the new form of government
which they established. From this government they
expected to realize an equality of opportunity for
all men such as no other had ever dreamed of as
an ideal to be desired. The Declaration of Inde
pendence inevitably brought the white man's ques
tion to the fore as he faced the red man, owner by
right of occupation, and the black man, now be
come American by right of birth. Just as inevitably,
with the first freedman, arose the negro's question,
"What is my status in American life?" The clamor
for a true, unclouded answer to both questions in
creased with the increasing numbers of the freed-
men.

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Wanted - Leaders !

Even during the slave era, with the growth in
numbers and in race consciousness on the part of
the intelligent, educated few, the question of the
status of the Negro in American life inevitably
arose. Among those who were first to awake to
the inevitable was the Rev. James W. C. Penning-
ton, D. D., of New York, foremost among the negro
scholars and leaders of the last century.

Lecturing in England and Scotland about 1840,
Dr. Pennington said, "The colored population of
the United States have no destiny separate from
that of the nation in which they are an integral part.
Our destiny is bound up with that of America. Her
ship is ours ; her pilot is ours ; her storms are ours ;
her calms are ours. If she breaks upon any rock,
we break with her. If we, born in America, cannot
live upon the same soil on terms of equality with
the descendants of Scotchmen, Englishmen, Irish
men, Frenchmen, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks,
and Poles, then the fundamental theory of America
fails and falls to the ground."

The same question is involved today in any dis
cussion of the status of the Negro. The Negro can
not answer it alone, the white race must enter with
him into these too often forbidden portals, and help
him unlock the door of mystery.

What, then, is the Negro's status in American
political life? It is that which our national Con
stitution gives him, with lawful qualifications made
by several States. No sincere Christian can stand
for the breaking or the ignoring of law. If laws
are bad, change them; but safety, justice, and de-

212

What of the Future?

cency demand that they be obeyed — else, anarchy.
The national Constitution declares the ideal. The
qualifications of the States are based upon the same
just principle "that the best qualified should rule;"
the practice of the politicians is quite another thing.
The wise know that the resort to illegality to gain
ends is as the pit to destroy others.

During the slave era, the negro leaders of the
freedmen set themselves to the task of establishing
their citizenship; so that this question was a live
issue even before the Civil War. Out of it, grew
two distinct theories of relationship of the Negro
to American life. Richard Allen was the leader of
one school of thought. He and his confreres had
been treated with scant courtesy in the white Metho
dist Church of Philadelphia ; he therefore withdrew,
and founded the African Methodist Episcopal
Church. His contention was that the Negro should
have his own Church, his own leaders, and should
build his own enterprises in every line of endeavor.

The leader of the opposite school was Frederick
Douglass, who thus declared the principle upon
which his following proceeded : "I am well aware
of the anti-Christian prejudices which have excluded
many colored persons from white churches, and the
consequent necessity of erecting their own places
of worship. This evil I would charge upon its
originators, and not the colored people. But such
a necessity does not now exist to the extent of for
mer years. There are societies where color is not
regarded as a test of membership, and such places

213

Wanted - Leaders !

I deem more appropriate for colored persons than
exclusive or isolated organizations."

While, in detail, these two theories may vary in
their developing expression, the principles upon
which they were founded remain, and powerfully
affect the Negroes' attitude towards all the depart
ments of our complex life. The question was both
natural and inevitable, and became an increasingly
live issue with the growing free population, as they
looked forward hopefully, in 1850, to the day of
universal freedom. It was a question which could
not be answered by themselves alone. The dis-
franchisement of the Negro before the Civil War,
was so nearly universal, that the answer to his ques
tion of relation to the political life of America was
clearly a negative one. But there was a growing
sentiment in the Northern States, coincident with
the rise of the Abolition party, toward negro suf
frage on a restricted basis.

It is probable that President Lincoln's very con
servative view of the matter would have expressed
the view of the growing minority of whites before
the war; and, had he lived after it, it is equally
likely that it would have prevailed over all the re
united Union, as it does, with qualifications, in
many States at the present time. I quote his letter,
written in 1864, to the Governor of Louisiana, and
printed in the Negro Year Book of 1919. "Now
you are about to have a Convention which, among
other things, will probably define the elective fran
chise. I barely suggest, for your private considera
tion, whether some of the colored people may not

214

What of the Future?

be let in, as for instance, the very intelligent, and
especially those who have fought gallantly in our
ranks. They would probably help, in some trying
time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the
family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion,
not to the public, but to you alone." Again in his
last public speech, April 11, 1865, in speaking of
the new Louisiana Government, he said : "It is also
unsatisfactory to some, that the elective franchise is
not given to the colored man. I would myself pre
fer that it were conferred on the very intelligent,
and on those who serve our cause as soldiers/'

It is true that a State like Mississippi would be
in an intolerable condition if unqualified suffrage
were in practice, because the majority of the Ne
groes and some of the Whites are either illiterate,
or too nearly so, to be intelligent voters. It is safe
to say that no intelligent man, black or white, in the
State, would vote for unrestricted franchise with
its certain consequence of domination by the mass
of the unfit.

In no sense does this age face the problems of
the old reconstruction of 1865 to 1880. But the
tragedies of that old time were not primarily of the
Negro's making. The thoughtful, older men, who
are familiar with the age, and analyze the motives
of conduct, know that Negroes, whose loyalty to
their old masters has never faltered, transferred
that loyalty to their liberators in utmost good faith
and profound gratitude. We know that the Negro
bowed before the "Yankee" with the same motive
of grateful reverence that the American bows to

215

Wanted - Leaders !

the statues of Washington and Lafayette. The
wise, thoughtful Negro of today looks back upon
that wild era, and sees the mistakes and the loss to
his race; while he lets others do the talking. Its
lessons are not lost to him, difficult as it is for many
people in the South to believe it. No one can read
between the lines of the lectures of their great lead
ers without knowing how keen their insight is. An
illuminating example is Dr. Isaiah Montgomery's
debate in the Mississippi Constitutional Convention
in favor of the present suffrage law of the State.

There is but one demand — that laws be honestly
administered. But this would involve office-hold
ing! Well, why not if it contribute to mutual in
terest? Is it true democracy that would leave half
of a population (as in some communities) unrepre
sented, all the way from State Legislature to police
men of a negro ward in town? Can that be Chris
tian justice, whose approval we ask of our Lord,
but which deprives a people of the right to guard
the most sacred trust which God imposes — the
homes in which they live? There are just as many
classes among the Negroes as among the Whites.
They are all forced into solidarity for like reasons
that make the solid South. Neither is healthy.
Both are based on unreasonable prejudice. The
solid Negro believes he faces a solid white wall.
The solid South believes it faces two solids, North
and Negro. In neither case is it true. Just let
somebody begin to do justly, trust the other fellow,
and trust, above all, God's power to inject a sense
of justice and fair play even where human short-

216

What of the Future?

sightedness cannot see, and most of our troubles in
this line would evaporate. The problem of trust
is at once a community problem and a world prob
lem which only the determined faith which removes
mountains can solve.

Every one of our States has some wise, patriotic
negro leaders who are earnestly studying the prob
lems of race and of State, and who are profoundly
anxious that race-integrity be maintained and race-
relations be cordial and mutually helpful. They,
and they alone, know the trials and burdens, the
achievements and ambitions of their race so per
fectly as to witness with authority. Over our en
tire nation, it is by the white race that the laws are
made and executed, that social needs are ministered
to, that prisons are administered, and that educa
tion is provided, and health and sanitation super
vised. There is not a State in which the regula
tion of civic life would, or could, be turned over
to the Negroes. This lays upon the Whites the
chivalric obligation of studying, the more conscien
tiously and carefully, the needs and interests of
their negro fellow-citizens. This cannot be done
apart from the highly intelligent Negroes. In our
State governments we should have negro repre
sentatives of their race to confer with law-makers
as advisers. An hour's conference with two or
three of their leaders, chosen for the purpose by
their own people, informed and freely representing
their interests, would clear the atmosphere of racial
misunderstanding, as no debate of a white legisla
ture could do in a whole session.

217

Wanted - Leaders !

In our city administration, the white and colored
population are, by mutual choice, not by law, segre
gated; yet, through employment in daily contact, if
one member suffer, all members suffer with it — but
the Negro, most. In many cities, never a peace-
officer is seen, save after crime has been committed.
How much better that his ward of the city be
guarded and cared for before, so that the order and
decency which ordinarily prevails, in spite of ne
glect, may be guarded and maintained! The Ne
groes should have their own peace officers ; and their
right to protect their own homes should be kept
utterly inviolate. Citizenship is a sacred trust, and
the care of citizens and the harmony of life demand
that the most wholesome conditions of life be made
for all alike.

We, of the Episcopal Church, have tested this out
through many years. We have sat in councils, in
conferences, on committees and boards with Ne
groes. With scarcely an exception, we have found
them as courteous as ourselves. In counsel, some
are wise and valued advisers ; some are less so ; none
are useless. Their addresses sound much like ours ;
upon matters of their own race, far more illumi
nating than ours, as a rule. We mutually fulfil the
covenant which Dr. Washington's Atlanta speech
proposed, and which our whole people accepted in
1884. The substance of that proposal was that "in
our outward, common life, in all that goes to make
a harmonious relation and a prosperous people, we
are a unit like a man's hand; in our inner social
life, in all that contributes to racial integrity and the

218

What of the Future ?

separate trusts that God imposes, we are separate
as the fingers of that hand; but hand and fingers
unite in striving to perfect the human family, to
strengthen and build up, to guard and to purify, the
great living Temple of God." Can the Church be
God's Church, and stand for less?

The educated, intelligent Negroes of today, who
read and think, are as anxious to contribute to the
best interests of their communities, their States, and
our common Nation, as are the Whites. This has
been tested in community "clean-up campaigns," in
anti-tuberculosis movements, in liberty loan drives,
in volunteers for war, in active service in army and
navy — in every movement in which they have been
assigned a share. They have never asked exemp
tion from any duty. If service be a badge of honor,
the Negro has won it. If the laborer is worthy of
his hire, then the Negro has earned the fruit of his
service as a citizen. If there are difficulties to be
encountered in the bestowal of his earnings, they
should be met squarely. Conference on any vital
subject whatever, is always courteous and cordial
when the Negro is accorded the place that God gave
him in creating him a man. That, too, is not con
jecture, but long-proved fact. When men have
learned that the house of State is as much God's
house as that of Church, we shall learn how to hold
brotherly conference with black or red or yellow or
brown, and differences and misunderstandings and
green-eyed hatred will be banished.

Utopia, one says! Possibly; but if there were
no Utopia to strive for, we would cease the striving,

219

Wanted - Leaders !

and be content to live in any jungle that gave us
birthplace.

The philosophy of life changes as present ideals
are reached, and as loftier ones replace them in the
half-conscious process of spiritual growth. A retro
spect of child-growth, with its heightening ambi
tions urged upward by progressive ideals and men
tal and spiritual growth, illustrates this changing
philosophy. It ought also to illustrate the folly of
a rigid fixedness in life's relationships such as leaves
no room for that expansion which enlightenment
brings both to ourselves and to others. Thought
ful people cannot suppose that our ideas about race-
relations will always remain just as they are. They
have changed greatly in the past, and we do not
know just how God is going to lead us through the
maze of the future. There is but one sure rule —
to do justly, and to know that righteous obedience
to God's law of justice, and conformity to God's
law of love, constitute the wisdom which will be
justified of its children in never-ending generations.
There ought also to be a human reliance that can
be depended upon. In every age, it has been the
unusual stability of character based upon profound
religious conviction on the part of the few, that has
saved the many.

We have traced, in brief, the lives of some of
those outstanding negro characters of deep convic
tion, who have been the ensigns of their people. It
was upon these men of Church and School, with
their co-workers like Booker Washington and
others, that the duty of leadership has fallen in

220

What of the Future?

these years, beginning in the '80s, and continuing
until now, when new relations between the races
have been in the making. At the beginning of this
period the old regime had not yet been forgotten;
the bad start of reconstruction had muddied the
waters, and no one could see the bottom; the new
freed race had still to try its wings; the old sur
vivors of both races — now few, indeed — who had
made the old relations, were then the many in mid
dle life clinging to the past; the old "Uncles" and
the old "Mammies" were still too many, and the
endearment of the old ties was still too strong to
give immediate place to a new relation between free
Whites and black Freedmen or their free-born sons.
The North did not know just where to place the
members of a race in its existing level of develop
ment; and the South was unwilling to have them
where reconstruction had placed them. In conse
quence that happened, which has always happened
in the history of the race when others had the
power; the Negroes were largely unconsidered or
ill-considered, and their real interest and their best
good were alike submerged, while North and South
spent weary years in controversies in which each
side was sure of its own rectitude and distrustful
of the other's. No better condition for missing the
conservative right can be found than that which
extremist advocates necessarily make in imputing
error to others because of the conviction that those
others must think wrong. Through such a maze,
the younger leaders were raised up to guide their
people, and to demonstrate to the older, more ad-

221

Wanted - Leaders !

vanced, white race, the real worth of the backward
black.

It is difficult to see how anybody can trace the
life and work of the comparatively small band of
negro leaders, during these forty years past, with
out a profound feeling of admiration for their
Christian character, their patience, their wisdom,
and their fine sense of Christian delicacy, exhibited
under trying conditions. Think of the men upon
whom God has placed this most difficult and deli
cate task of laying the foundation for a totally new
relation toward a more numerous and powerful
race, and then try to remember how very few have
seriously blundered! Think of their task of re
making their relations with a people who were
recently their masters ! Think of their task of teach
ing themselves (and in such true way that the mem
bers of the other race will also accept the lesson) to
live as free black men with white men, on the same
soil, and amid the same surroundings, as of yore!
Then say whether you can withhold your chivalrous
sympathy, or your resolve to help on the learning of
the lesson so utterly essential to the peace of both
races.

The Negro has had, and still has, this tremendous
task laid upon him of making the place which is his
in life; and of taking it, not because he demands
it, but because he has successfully made that place.
In general, he who has to demand his place, has
never earned it. In. general, too* he who has made
a place has deserved it, and, in the long run, it will
be accorded him. The Negroes of education, of re-

222

What of the Future?

finement, of gifts and of culture, are, too generally,
held back from the place they have made. This is
partly because of ignorance on the part of white
people that such Negroes exist, while the only ones
they know are the great majority of ignorant farm
hands; partly because of the strange anachronism,
"social equality," which cuts straight across race
integrity, and nowhere exists even within the single
bounds of any race.

The negro people are not standing for social
equality among themselves, even though some of
their extremists, along with the Japanese, are mud
dying the stream of concord with a cry of "equality
of races." No one can doubt but that sane people
of every race will continue to stand for tha't which
God made them — white, yellow, brown, red and
black — and will try to keep themselves so. In the
long run, all will learn to value most the respect that
righteous living and service to mankind merit, and
to contend least for that which has not been earned.
Whatever the future may bring, whether return to
Africa in large numbers, or migration to Haiti as
some of their leaders contend, or permanence in
America, the duty of each day is to help the Negro
to help himself in attaining the fullest preparation
for the destiny which God's providence has surely
in store for him.

So much for political and social relationships, as
between the two races. The Negroes have asked
the momentous question, "What is our status?"

So too, in matters concerning the Church, they
are asking the same question; not, indeed, as in-

223

Wanted - Leaders !

volving membership, but as regards organization.
The proposal, made in 1874, to create separate Mis
sionary Jurisdictions, resulted in separate Convoca
tions, in a few Dioceses, some fourteen years later.
Its renewal, in 1904, in the form of a Memorial,
nearly unanimous, from the colored clergy, resulted,
in 1918, in the application of the Canon on the Suf
fragan Episcopate to those Dioceses which should
desire to adopt its provisions. The two Bishops
elected by Arkansas and North Carolina have been
given all the authority and personal initiative pos
sible under the Canon. That it did not, and does
not now, satisfy the full desire of the Memorialists
is well known. That the conditions obtaining in
the South and not now felt to be needful in the
North, constitute ground for local adaptation of the
Historic Episcopate, is the judgment of the Me
morialists.

The reasons for the petition as "the result of
many years of patient observation, study and
prayer," are clearly set forth, and may be found in
the successive Journals of General Convention from
1904 to 1918. Meanwhile, there are no negro dele
gates in the House of Deputies, save one from Li
beria and no direct voice, from the more than thirty
thousand lay members, to represent their interests
in the national body. This does not mean that the
race is nowhere heard, or its interest never sought.
But it does mean that, in national Conferences and
Boards, to which the Negro has sought entrance, the
Church is still slow to grant his request.

224

What of the Future?

The picture is not wholly dark. What are the
results which, in the midst of confusion and difficul
ties, the Negro has been able to achieve?

The statistics for the whole race, here given, are
taken from the Negro Year Book of 1919. In 1866,
the Negroes owned 12,000 homes; in 1919, 600,000.
Farms owned in 1866, 20,000; in 1919, 50,000.
The wealth, for the two contrasted years, is repre
sented as $20,000,000 and $1,110,000,000.

These figures are very eloquent in their announce
ment. They do not, and cannot, even begin to tell
the story of the supreme devotion, the untiring
labor, the self-abasement, the sacrifice, the consum
mate wisdom, of most of that small company of
real negro leaders, who, from the '80s down to now,
have accepted the responsibility, and performed the
tremendous task, of retrieving the losses of recon
struction and inspiring the race with an indomitable
will to move forward. For this company of leaders
was from among the 3.6% of those in professional
service, as teachers, doctors, lawyers and the like.
Upon them fell the sacred task of guiding the re
maining 96.4%, less than 10% of whom were lit
erate. There is no more interesting reading than
that which the story of these leaders presents; and
that of the trade-schools, farmers' conferences, edu
cational rallies, and religious institutes.

And how was the progress accomplished ? It be
gan with the veritable crusade of constructive ser
vice preached by the leaders.

"If educated men and women of the race will see
and acknowledge the necessity of practical indus-

15 225

Wanted - Leaders !

trial training, and go to work with a zeal and de
termination, their example will be followed by
others who are now without ambition of any kind.
The race cannot hope to come into its own until the
young colored men and women make up their minds
to assist in the general development along these
lines. The elder men and women trained in the
hard school of slavery, and who so long possessed
all the labor — skilled and unskilled — of the South,
are dying out; their places must be filled by their
children, or we shall lose our hold upon these occu
pations. Again, Phillips Brooks gave expression
to the sentiment: 'One generation gathers the ma
terial, and the next builds the palaces.' As I under
stand it, he wished to inculcate the idea that one
generation lays the foundation for succeeding gen
erations."

This is a sample of the messages of these cru
saders, borne in varying cadences throughout the
race. The appeal was to the cultured, by precept
and even more by example, to stimulate the ambi
tion of the whole race; to realize that foundation-
building is the task of each generation, and that the
neglect of one generation means loss to itself and
the next.

But they were not preaching only. They did
what they exhorted others to do. With the help of
white friends, they began to build schools, and to
teach those who could teach others the value of in
dustry and thrift, and the blessings of the self-re
spect that is unafraid to face life and contribute to
its needs. And thus the army of teachers began to

226

What of the Future?

go forth. Most of them were not well prepared,
and are not at this day, for the calls have been so
hurried that the preparation has been equally so.

Today there are 38,000 teachers, against the 600
in 1866; most of them in the little country schools;
many under most difficult conditions and impossible
surroundings, both of which are rapidly improving
under the kindly interest of the dominant whites.
And, too, there are many thousands, trained to a
degree in the various trades, and taking their places
in the industrial life of their homes. The fact that,
in 1866, 95% were illiterate, and now only 20%,
stands as a living monument to the devoted leaders
of these forty years past.

What then is the status of the Negro in American
life? Our forefathers fought for liberty to bestow
it on all when the time came that the humblest mem
bers were prepared to assume its responsibilities. A
later generation fought for Democracy — that crown
ing and pervading principle of liberty. Our great
leaders have been as wise, as clear, as simple in the
interpretation of democracy as their forefathers
were in that of liberty. Shall the Church of God
be wise enough, and devoted enough, and fearless
enough, to lead the people of God to realize what
has been purchased with blood and consecrated by
sacrifice ?

Now, as then, self-interest engenders prejudice;
prejudice of class towards other classes, of crafts
towards other crafts, of race towards other races.
All the prejudice is not on one side; but no white
man, with an eye to justice, can fail to admit the

227

Wanted - Leaders !

Negro has far the greater cause for his prejudice.

The very existence of different crafts and classes,
and still more of different races occupying the same
national home, makes problems. The only solu
tion that really solves is Justice, with its accompany
ing weight in the balance — Mercy. Without the
exercise of these, no class or race could hope for
continuous life or persistent growth. Where truth
and justice meet together, righteousness and peace
will kiss each other in a brotherly, harmonious rela
tion, that only the devil's lies and cruel injustice
ever mar and distort.

The Negro has been free for sixty years and
more. Building upon the wonderfully fine founda
tion of the past (in spite of manifold and manifest
flaws in its making) , he has reared racial structures
of social, commercial, industrial and religious life,
that command respect and admiration. The credit
belongs to both races — to the Negro himself, but
no less to the race which was once his owner, and
whose hand is clearly seen in the building.

The Negro knows even better than his white
critics how faulty a living building is in which the
majority of the living stones are still rough, un
polished, unsquared. He asks, and he has the right
which God gives to His people to ask, that, as a free
man, he be treated as a man; that, as justice is the
right of life, he be accorded it; that, as a citizen,
he be granted the rights of citizenship — the equal
right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ;
that laws governing citizenship be applied with equal
justice to Negroes and to Whites.

228

What of the Future?

If the Church of God (that is, her members) can
bring herself to stand for less than that, it is diffi
cult to find ground for forgiveness at the hands of
the Son of Man who died upon the Cross for the
salvation of all.

Of course there is a problem; but the real prob
lem is not how to escape doing justice, but how to
be just without destroying racial integrity. Race
and family are of God's institution, God's alone,
and their respective relations are of His making.
Both are written in God's handwriting, in flesh and
blood; not in man's, on scraps of paper. But this
phase of the subject is exceedingly large. The
apology for its introduction here, is to be found in
the emphasis which it seeks to lay upon the ultimate
purpose of education and training.

When one considers the few years from Emanci
pation, the reflection must come that long, long steps
forward have been taken; and who can doubt that
where unalloyed interest in the progress of the black
members reigns in the hearts of the white, the guid
ance of the loving Father has stayed our impatience ?
Who can doubt that, in His guiding providence,
He will deal with us according to His lovingkind-
ness?

229

APPENDIX

NOTE A

(Chapter VI, page 159)

The Hospital was the result of the devoted work of the
Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Hunter, the latter making this her special
charge, raising most of the funds, and keeping them separate
from those of the School.

The earlier Principals of the School itself each performed
distinctive services which won the affection and gratitude of
the Church in North Carolina. The Rev. Dr. J. Brinton
Smith founded the school in his five years of service from
1867 to 1872. The Rev. Dr. John E. C. Smede nourished it
through the most difficult reconstruction period, 1872 to 1884,
when tension was high, and when sympathy between North
and South and White and Black was at its lowest ebb. The
Rev. Dr. Robert B. Sutton, 1884-1891, succeeded to an atmos
phere of relaxed weariness following the long drawn-out con
troversies over the "race question," when support was most
difficult, the more so because the Church had no settled policy
of school work for the Negroes. Each had a task requiring
all his fine ability.

It is no reflection on others (for comparison is impossible
where the times and tasks were so distinct) to say that the
Rev. Dr. Hunter's great contribution was the complete re
organization of the educational ideal of St. Augustine's, and
its refounding on the devoted and heroic labors of his prede
cessors. Dr. Hunter's 25 years of service contributed most
powerfully to the movement which made the Church Institute
possible, as well as to the present strong growth toward a
solid foundation for the Christian education of the Negroes.
He became Dr. Sutton's assistant, when the "modern period"
began. Old things were passing away, and the new had yet to

231

Appendix

be fashioned. The modern educational system was just be
ginning to be realized in the South. Dr. Hunter brought
youth, vigor and ability to the task not only of justifying the
wisdom of the fathers but of fulfilling the office of the wise
steward in bringing forth old and new treasures to enrich the
present and the future. He was ably seconded by Mrs. Hunter,
and by his assistant who is now Bishop Delany.

The Rev. Edgar H. Goold, for four years Dr. Hunter's
assistant, is now the Principal. He is a graduate of Amherst
College and of the General Theological Seminary.

NOTE B

(Chapter VI, page 159)

James Solomon Russell was born of slave parents in Meck
lenburg, Va., Dec. 20th, 1827. The name Solomon was bestowed
by his mother with the prayer that the little one would inherit
the wisdom of his namesake ; and the prayer has been answered,
for this boy has ripened into one of the wisest of his people.
A war-boy, his early years were subjected to the privations
of the general poverty of the times. At twelve years his
schooling began, the boy paying his way partly by selling
butter and eggs, and, for the balance, his labor. Hampton
was the earthly goal of the young colored youths of that time,
and Russell attained it. From Hampton he entered Major
Cooke's School in Petersburg, and graduated from the theologi
cal department, in 1882. Upon being ordered a deacon, he was
at once appointed missionary to Brunswick and Mecklenburg
counties, with residence at Lawrenceville. Within eight months
he brought his wife, Miss Virginia M. Morgan, to make the
happy home which has been the haven of the busiest man of
his race in the world, with the exception of Dr. Washington.
Mrs. Russell, until her death two years ago, was as vital to
the life of the School as was her husband. In 1917, the
Virginia Seminary conferred the Degree of Doctor of Divinity
on Mr. Russell, the first person of color to receive this honor
so rarely bestowed upon anyone by that venerable Seminary.
Once has Dr. Russell declined election to the Episcopate, and

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once again to have his name presented. He felt the urge of
duty too strongly at Lawrenceville to allow himself to be
diverted. For many years he has been Archdeacon of South
ern Virginia, and the most conspicuously wise leader among the
400,000 Negroes of the Diocese.

As a deacon, he opened a school in the vestry-room of the
little church built by his own efforts. Mrs. Russell and him
self were the teachers. The population was 88 per cent illiterate,
and correspondingly prejudiced and superstitious. The story
of the transformation is a romance of absorbing interest. The
teacher was a travelling missionary, without other means than
nature had provided for transporting himself over great dis
tances. He pleaded for a horse before the Diocesan Convention.
"Let's give Brother Russell a horse," was the response, and
"Ida" became as well known as Russell himself over two large
"black-belt" counties. So Russell and Ida became the mission
ary team, each producing fruit after its kind. The Arch
deacon's pupils became scouts and recruits in the forward army
against sin and ignorance; Ida's colts increased the transporta
tion facilities of workers.

In the midst of besetting difficulties, the young priest found
a steady sympathetic helper in Mrs. Buford whose daughter
became the wife of the late Bishop of East Carolina. She had
started a hospital for infirm colored people, and now extended
her interest to the school.

NOTE C

(Chapter VII, page 180)

The Methodist Bishop, William Capers, father of the late
Bishop of South Carolina and grandfather of the Bishop of
West Texas, gave much of his life to the Negro. No better
witness can be found of the power of Jesus Christ over the
life of those Negroes whom He specially called. These samples
from Bishop Capers' Autobiography are selected, his descrip
tion regretfully abridged:

"The most remarkable man in Fayetteville (N. C.) when
I went there, and who died during my stay, was a Negro by

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Appendix

the name of Henry Evans. I say the most remarkable in view
of his class; and I call him Negro with unfeigned respect.
The name simply designates the race, and it is vulgar to regard
it with opprobrium. I have known and loved and honored
not a few Negroes in my lifetime, who were probably as pure
of heart as Evans, or anybody else. Such were my old friends,
Castile Selby and John Boquet, of Charleston; Will Camp
bell and Harry Myrick, of Wilmington; York Cohen, of
Savannah; and others I might name. These I might call
remarkable for their goodness. But I use the word in a
broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the
father of the Methodist Church, black and white, in Fayette-
ville, and the best preacher of his time in that quarter; and
who was so remarkable, as to have become the greatest
curiosity of the town; insomuch that distinguished visitors
hardly felt that they might pass a Sunday in Fayetteville
without hearing him preach."

Henry Evans was a shoemaker in Virginia, licensed to
preach by the Methodists. Being free, he decided to move to
Charleston. On the way, Fayetteville detained him. His
spirit was stirred at perceiving the ungodliness of his people.
There was no religion of any denomination, so Evans began
preaching to his people. The Town Council objected, and he
withdrew to the sandhills nearby. The results upon the chang
ing lives were notable. Evans explained his motives to the
authorities; and this, with the fruits of his work, won the
day; he was allowed the liberty of the town. Mistresses and
masters, powerfully influenced by the great improvement in
their servants, began to attend the Services. They built a
frame structure for the preaching, with seats for the Whites
and a projection for Evans' home. It became too small and
was enlarged, for the Whites now occupied all of the original
building, the Negroes the addition. "That," continues Bishop
Capers, "was the identical state of the case when I was pastor.
Often was I in that shed, and much to my edification. I have
known not many preachers who appeared more conversant
with Scripture than Evans, and whose conversation was more
instructive as to the things of God. He seemed always

234

Appendix

deeply impressed with the responsibility of his position; and
not even our old friend Castile was more remarkable for his
humble and deferential deportment towards the Whites than
Evans was. Nor would he allow any partiality of his friends
to induce him to vary, in the least degree, the line of conduct
or the bearing which he had prescribed for himself in this
respect ; never speaking to a white man but with his hat under
his arm, never allowing himself to be seated in their houses;
and even confining himself to the kind and manner of dress
proper for Negroes in general, except his plain black coat for
the pulpit. 'The Whites are kind to me, and come to hear me
preach ; but I belong to my own sort, and must not spoil them/
And yet, Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and, in his duty,
feared not the face of man."

He died, Mr. Capers ministering to him, in 1810, his last
breath drawn in the act of pronouncing, "Thanks be to God
Which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Bishop Capers continues : "On the Sunday before Evans'
death, during this meeting, the little door between his humble
shed and the chancel where I stood, was open; and the dying
man entered for a last farewell to his people. He was almost
too feeble to stand at all, but supporting himself by the railing
of the chancel he said, 'I have come to say my last word to
you. It is this : None but Christ. Three times I have had
my life in jeopardy for preaching the Gospel to you. Three
times I have broken the ice on the edge of the water and swum
across the Cape Fear to preach the Gospel to you. And now,
if in my last hour, I could trust to that, or to anything else
but to Christ crucified for my salvation, all would be lost, and
my soul perish forever.' A noble testimony, worthy, not of
Evans only, but of Saint Paul ! His funeral at the church was
attended by a greater concourse of persons than had been seen
on any funeral occasion before. The whole community appeared
to mourn his death, and the universal feeling seemed to be
that, in honoring the memory of Henry Evans, we were pay
ing a tribute to virtue and religion. He was buried under the
chancel of the church of which he had been in so remarkable a
manner the founder."

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Appendix

Henry Evans was of the literate class; not educated in the
sense of this day, but of his day, when the Bible was far more
the book of Christian people than it is now; and Henry Evans
was "wiser than his teachers."

NOTE D

(Chapter VII, page 185)

Attention may be called to two notable negro leaders of
the early Nineteenth Century.

The Rev. William Douglass, the son of a blacksmith, born
in Baltimore in 1805, made his way into the Methodist min
istry. While at work on the Eastern Shore, he sought episcopal
orders, and was ordained by Bishop Stone in St. Stephen's,
Cecil County. "In the evening," wrote the Bishop, "the church
was given up to the Colored People, and the Rev. Mr. Doug
lass preached to them an interesting sermon." This was on
June 22, 1834. The same year he was called to St. Thomas'
African Church, Philadelphia, which, since the death, in 1818,
of its founder, the Rev. Absalom Jones, had been served by one
and another of the white rectors of the city. On February
14, 1836, Mr. Douglass was advanced to the priesthood. Bishop
Onderdonk who officiated, wrote, "Mr. Douglass is a man of
color. I take the opportunity of recording my very high esti
mate of his highly respectable intellect and most amiable
qualities which entirely relieved my mind, in his case, from
the anxieties that I had long felt in regard to this department
of episcopal duty. He ministers to a congregation entirely at
unity in itself, much attached to him, and improving under his
pastoral care in principles and duties of our common Chris
tianity."

Mr. Douglass became a leader of power among his race.
Bishop Alonzo Potter, in announcing his death to the Conven
tion of 1862, said, "It hath pleased the Lord to call away from
the Church Militant the Rev. William Douglass, rector of St.
Thomas' African Church, in this city, where he has ministered
for the last twenty-seven years — a man of great modesty, of
ripe scholarship, and of much more than ordinary talents and
prudence. He is, as far as I am informed, the only clergy-

236

Appendix

man of unmixed African descent, who, in this country, has
published work of considerable magnitude. In two volumes,
one of sermons and one a history of St. Thomas' Church, he
has vindicated his right to appear among our respected divines.
As a reader of the Liturgy he was unsurpassed."

The Rev. Alexander Crummell, D. D., was born in New
York in 1819. He was early baptized by the Rev. Peter Wil
liams of St. Philip's Church, under whom he was trained in
the Church's ways. In early manhood he applied for Orders.
The General Theological Seminary declined to admit Negroes
as students at that time, and Crummell was prepared for ordina
tion in Boston. In 1842, he was ordained by Bishop Griswold.
Dr. Clark, later Bishop of Rhode Island, was one of the exam
iners, and years afterwards the impression then strongly made
was thus recorded: "I was appointed, with the late Rev. Dr.
William Croswell, to examine young Crummell when he
applied for deacon's orders in the Diocese of Massachusetts;
and I remember that Dr. Croswell afterwards remarked to me
that no candidate for the ministry had ever passed through his
hands who had given him more entire satisfaction." After a
brief year in Providence, R. I., Mr. Crummell answered the
earnest call then coming from Liberia, and threw in his life
with his colored brethren there. He was at once missionary,
teacher, and the trainer of the theological students. Once he
left Liberia for a stay in England, and returned with a Cam
bridge degree. After the Civil War, he returned to America,
and, in Washington, founded St. Luke's Church, whose corner
stone Bishop Pinckney laid in 1876. For more than twenty
years he was its rector.

No man of the race in his day was more worthily esteemed,
or more worthy of it, than Alexander Crummell, and none
more truly an apostle of his Lord.

NOTE E
(Chapter VII, page 185)

The Colony of Georgia affords another interesting illustra
tion. It was the result of James Oglethorpe's venture in

237

Appendix

colonizing debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates, a move
ment characterized as "the beginning of modern philanthropy,"
and giving an opportunity to those noted missionaries of the
Church of England, John and Charles Wesley and George
Whitfield. Slavery was to be forbidden in the colony; but
circumstances proved too strong. Rice was the staple crop,
the waters formed its congenial home, and the Negroes — who
else could so well subdue the swamps and make them produc
tive? The result was inevitable. Georgia conformed to the
general policy of her sister colonies.

As philanthropy was the motive, so religion was the ani
mating spirit, of the new colony. Accordingly John and
Charles Wesley were among the first colonists. The former
established Christ Church Parish, Savannah, which was later
divided, allowing the formation of Christ Church Parish,
Frederica, named for the Savannah mother-church, Charles
Wesley being its first rector, in 1736. These were deadly
pioneer days, and rectors came thick and fast as predecessors
were driven out, sometimes by political influence, most often
by climatic.

Charles Wesley remained a year, and then John, his brother,
assumed the charge of both parishes, making his way to
Frederica on foot, trusting, for the crossing of the large rivers,
to the passing canoes of the friendly Indians. "The fact of
these visits to Frederica has been questioned," writes the Rev.
D. W. Winn, the present rector, "but the writer has seen Wes
ley's own diary in which he tells how he fell into the water
from a small boat while embarking from Frederica, and the
leaves of the diary showed the marks of the water." Mr.
Winn, the descendant of the sister of those first missionaries,
Charles and John Wesley, and fourteenth rector in succession
from them, has had more than ordinary interest in the labors
of his predecessors and in the knowledge of them. George
Whitfield succeeded the Wesleys in 1737 or '38; and, after them,
three other missionaries of the period of establishment. The
last, the Rev. Bartholomew Zorabuhler, was also the first of the
line of permanent workers, serving from 1746 to 1766. Fred-
erica, the chief centre of negro missions, furnishes our sample

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Appendix

for the study of this early work in Georgia. The English
Church Commissary, succeeding Commissary Bray for a part
of the period, was the Rev. J. Ottolonghe, who made his head
quarters in Savannah, and directed the Church's enterprises in
the colony.

Happily we have access to some of the early reports of the
Commissary describing the negro work, these being kindly fur
nished by the Rev. James Lawrence, present historiographer
of the Diocese. These are written with punctilious regard to
the picturesquely bad spelling of the days of "Bloody Mary"
and "Good Queen Bess," one line only, in original, is here
inflicted; it is dated Dec. 5, 1751. "In my last sent you by
ye Charming Martha I took ye liberty to acquaint you with
my safe arrival in Georgia." The lonely Commissary takes
large liberty in thus addressing his home-superiors through the
intermediary, not of a charming spinster, but of a boat whose
picture would belie the description; and he notes, in appropriate
capitals, his arrival, safe from peril, to which a good 20 per
cent of the adventurers of the time fell victims.

The letter proceeds: "As soon as the Fatigue of the
Voyage permitted it, I desired Reverend Zouberbuyler (Zora-
buhler, Mr. Winn says; but what matters such a liberty with
names among friends?) that he would be so good as to give
the people notice in the Church that I would instruct their
Negroes three days in the week, viz. : Sundays, Tuesdays and
Thursdays, which he accordingly did, and that I might make
it easier to the Masters of these unhappy Creatures, I have
appointed the Time of their coming to me to be at Night,
when their daily Labour is done. When we meet, I make them
go to Prayers with me, having composed for the purpose a few
Prayers, suitable (I hope) to the Occasion. Having thus rec
ommended Ourselves to the Protection of Heaven, and for his
Blessing on our Undertaking; I instruct them to Reade, that
they may be able in Time to comfort themselves in reading the
Book of God. After this is done, I make them repeat the
Lord's Prayer and the Belief, and a Short Portion of the
Catechism, explaining to them in as easie and Familiar a
manner as I can the Meaning of what they repeat, and before

239

Appendix

I part with them, I make a Discourse to them on the Being of
God, or the Life and Death of our adorable Redeemer, or
upon some of ye Precepts of the Holy Gospel, generally intro
ducing some Event or Story, taken out of the Bible, suitable
to the Discourse in Hand; and in order to get their Love, I
use them with all the Kindness and endearing Words that I
am capable of, which makes them willing to come to me and
ready to follow my advice, and as Rewards are Springs that set
less selfish minds than these unhappy Creatures possess, on
Motion, I have therefore promised to reward the Industrious
and Diligent, and Hope through Christ's Grace, that 'twill
have its due Effect. These then, Dear Sir, are the Methods,
these the Path, that I have chalked out in order to discharge
my Duty. If right and agreeable to your better Judgement,
I shall continue in them; if not, I shall be very ready to put
in Practice any other Method, which you shall please to pre
scribe."

As the efforts expand and the field is enlarged, new diffi
culties are met. In 1754, the Commissary has pushed out
among the new arrivals. A more stable government had
encouraged the expansion of planting interests. There were
great difficulties to be met in reaching the Negroes of the
new expansions. "Our Negroes," he writes, referring to the
new plantations, "are so ignorant of the English language, and
none can be found to talk in their own, that it is a great while
before you can get them to understand what the meaning of
Words is. Again Slavery is certainly a great Depresser of
the Mind, which retards their learning a new Religion pro
posed to them in a new and unknown Language, besides the
superstitions of a false religion to be combatted with, and
nothing harder to be removed (you know) than Prejudices of
Education, riveted by Time and intrenched in deep Ignorance."
So there was anguish of heart all along the line.

In 1858, the Commissary's letter clearly infers another peril
to his efforts growing out of the quarrels of Christian denom
inations. A Church-Bill was presented to the Assembly seeking
to better the conditions of the Slaves in all ways possible. But
the Assembly was composed of a large majority of Dissenters,

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Appendix

and the bill was presented by Church of England representa
tives — fair ground apparently for religious disputes which lost
sight of bill, of Negroes, of religion and of justice.

It was the age of materialism which, as Professor Brawley
says, "defeated the benevolence of Oglethorpe's scheme for
the founding of Georgia," and against which the Church bat
tled, not only on behalf of the slaves, but for the very life
of religion. A difficult battle it was when self-interest was alt
arrayed on the side of materialism.

In his evident great zeal and anxiety, the Commissary was
warmly followed by the Rev. Mr. Zorabuhler of Frederica,
under whom that parish was fixed to include the "Town of
Frederica, with the islands of Great and Little St. Simon's,
and the adjacent islands," and the name changed to St. James'.

Throughout the Revolutionary period, the Missions were
probably served from Savannah. Recovery from the disasters
of war was very slow, and it was not until after the consecra
tion of Bishop Elliott, in 1841, that the Church became organ
ized for work. Only three clergymen were in Georgia to
organize the primary Convention of the Diocese, in 1823.

In his first address to this Convention, Bishop Elliott said :
"The religious instruction of our domestics, and of the Negroes
upon plantations, is a subject that never should be passed over
in the address of a Southern Bishop." Six years later, he
enlarged upon what he deemed to be a worthy ministry to
them. He spoke from experience.

"During the last week, I visited the mission upon the north
side of the Ogeeche River, under the charge of the Rev.
William C. Williams. A neat country church has been erected
by some of the planters of that side of the river, which was
sufficiently completed for service but not for consecration.
I officiated in it on Sunday, the 18th of April, when eight
candidates were presented for Confirmation, the first fruits
of the earnest labor of their missionary. Mr. Williams is
pursuing the only plan that will be of any service with this
class of our population, identifying himself with their spiritual
condition, and going in and out among them as their pastor and
guide. It is my earnest hope that our Episcopal planters will

16 241

Appendix

take this matter into consideration, and make arrangements for
the employment of missionaries of their own Church, so that
Masters and Servants may worship together in unity of spirit
and in the bond of peace. It would tend very much to
strengthen the relation of Masters and Servants, by bringing
into action the highest and holiest feelings of our common
nature. There should be much less danger of inhumanity on the
one side, and of insubordination on the other, between parties
who knelt upon the Lord's day around the same Table and
were partakers of the same Communion."

The Ogeeche Mission has an interesting history of con
tinuous life from 1847 to the present day. It is ten miles from
Savannah in the heart of the then great rice fields, where two
Churches — St. Mark's the first, and still used, and St. Barn
abas', now decayed — were built. The Negroes were utterly
illiterate, and remained so until about 1890, when Mr. Dodge
built a school, and the younger ones were taught. The Ser
vices were committed to memory by that very large congrega
tion, and the responses were, and are, "as the sound of many
waters"; the singing, like a great organ. No instrument was
used. The "dark" for about fifty years was a very big, com
manding, black member with magnificent voice, who, at the
proper time for chant or hymn, stood before the congregation,
sounded the note, raised the tune, and both led and inspired the
singers. The habit still continues.

The Rev. Mr. Winn, for a long time their rector, wrote
this tribute in November, 1921. "They knew the Service and
took part in a way to make one's heart glow, and which would
put any white city congregation to shame. To minister to
and among them was an inspiration, even though physical
conditions as to locomotion, etc., were trying. I have dealt
with Negroes from the time of my 'black Mammy' Molinda,
who was 'no common nigger' but a 'Molly glossy nigger,' having
come from Madagascar; but while I could understand anything
said to me while looking the speaker in the face and paying
close attention, yet, when one of them spoke to another . it was
mostly an unknown tongue to me.

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Appendix

"Bishop Nelson, late of Georgia, said that a Service among
those rice-field Negroes was the most splendid thing he ever
experienced. That was my experience also; for, excepting the
great procession and Service at the laying of the corner-stone
of the Washington Cathedral, some eighteen years ago, there
has not been, in my 41 years of ministry, any approach to the
joy of a Service among those Negroes. It was not merely
enthusiasm — I could arouse that among any congregation of
Negroes — it was apprehension, appreciation, and the outpouring
of the soul."

There is perhaps no congregation in the South upon which
the ravages of war had so little effect. Later changes have
greatly reduced their number, but the old habits remain. The
offering is still, in part, eggs or other farm produce as
reverently offered as the money and coins in the silver alms-
basins of the city-church.

The reports of Georgia parishes in 1860, show that prac
tically all were ministering to the Negroes. In addition to the
extended work of Frederica Parish and St. Mark's, Ogeeche,
St. Stephen's Chapel, Savannah, had been established in '56,
especially for the Negroes, and was the base of mission-work
on nearby plantations.

NOTE F
(Chapter VII, page 185)

Regarding the instruction in religion given to the Negroes
by their white owners, the following may be of interest.

It is only occasionally that one finds a record like this :
"In 1712 the Rev. Gilbert Jones was Rector of Christ Church
Parish. He felt a great interest in the spiritual welfare of
the Negroes, and endeavored to persuade their owners to
assist in having them instructed in the Christian faith; but he
found this good work lay under difficulties as yet insuperable."

Generally the testimony is most favorable and encouraging,
as, for example, "The Rev. William Taylor wrote to the
Society in 1713, stating that Mrs. Haig and Mrs. Edwards,
who lately came to the plantations in Carolina, have taken

243

Appendix

extraordinary pains to instruct a considerable number of
Negroes in the principles of the Christian religion, and to
reclaim and reform them. The wonderful success they met
with in about six months, encouraged me to go and examine
the Negroes about their knowledge in Christianity. They
declared to me their faith in the chief articles of our religion,
which they sufficiently explained. They rehearsed by heart,
very distinctly, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Teh
Commandments. Fourteen of them gave me so great satis
faction, and were so desirous to be baptized, that I thought it
my duty to do it on the last Lord's Day. I doubt not but these
gentlewomen will prepare the rest of them for Baptism in a
little time, and I hope their good example will provoke some
masters and mistresses to take the same care and pains with
their poor Negroes."

NOTE G

(Chapter VII, page 186)

About 1834, an unknown writer, in South Carolina (a
journal published by the State Agricultural Department) makes
this significant statement which is strong testimony to the
advancement of the race: "Despite the injunction, 'Judge not,'
it has been asserted that the morality of the Negroes is not
in proportion to their religious fervor. A class, marked as
distinctly by their inferior social position as they are by race,
invites such charges which are far more sweeping than just.
If morality be the fruit of religion, it is not surprising (won
derful as the progress of the African in South Carolina has
been) that morality has not, in one century and a half, attained
the maturity, among the colored race, which has been the result
of nearly nineteen centuries of Christian teachings to the
European. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to sup
pose that any people exhibit in a higher degree that instinctive
faith in the existence of absolute justice, truth, and goodness,
which marks the capacity of human nature alike for religion
and for morality, than do the colored people of this State."

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Appendix

NOTE H

(Chapter VII, page 186)

"Resolved, 1, That it is unnecessary at present for this
body to take measures for the formation of any fund for
supporting Missionaries to the colored people; it being under
stood that the difficulty is rather to obtain the missionaries,
than the means of supporting them.

". . . . 5. That this Convention have heard, with great
satisfaction, of the employment, by proprietors of estates on
the Wateree and in Prince Williams Parish, of Missionaries
of our Church, for the religious instruction of their colored
people."

And the reason is significantly, though perhaps uncon
sciously, given in these two extracts from the same issue:

"Wateree Mission — 94 colored communicants. A decided
religious influence prevails among the Negroes, for many are
acting on principles but recently known to them. Sunday
services on plantation, 45 times."

NOTE I
(Chapter VII, page 189)

From the many who wrought devotedly and mightily and
lovingly among the plantation Negroes, there stand out a few
men whom their contemporaries would have singled out for
peculiar honors. And it surely is a peculiar honor to merit
note among the able spirits who formed the staff of mis
sionaries; for the Church entrusted the spiritual care of the
Negro to her ablest and best. Among them all, the Rev.
Alexander Glennie, rector of All Saints, Waccamaw, 1832-
1866, must hold a place all his own in the annals of time For
thirty-four years he was the shepherd of the negro folds of
the Waccamaw area. During those years the needs of his
flock; the wise way to provide them; their capacity, intellectual
and spiritual; the food needful for soul sustenance; the social
cravings, and how to provide wholesome gratifications — all

245

Appendix

these, and more, were Mr. Glennie's life study, and that of
his life-long friend and co-worker, Mr. Plowden Weston, of
Hagley Plantation, the seat of the largest single mission in
the field.

Gaining completely and very early the confidence of
planters and servants, Mr. Glennie labored in a vast field,
restricted only by his powers of endurance, which were enor
mous. As plantations, one after another, came under his care,
chapels were built and filled with well-instructed members and
catechumens. By about 1845, in addition to teachers and cate-
chists in large numbers, an Assistant Minister was employed,
and, two years later, two. His sermons to the Negroes, pub
lished with an introduction by himself, are marvels of beautiful
simplicity, the high art of the perfect teacher. In reading his
Good Friday sermon, the wonder is how so great and so
marvelous a mystery could be so truly and beautifully unfolded
in a wealth of one and two-syllable words. And the blessed
story loses absolutely nothing from the simplicity of the telling.

In him were combined the art of the teacher and the
tending care of the shepherd. "My habit is," he writes, "after
concluding the Service, to question the people assembled upon
the sermon they have just heard, which enables me to dwell
more at large upon matters briefly touched upon in the sermon.
This practice, and the frequent use of our Church Catechism,
is, I need scarcely say, the most important part of the duty
of those engaged in the instruction of Negroes." We might
add, in the better instruction of anybody.

NOTE J

(Chapter VII, page 191)

Similar to the work of Mr. Glennie and of Mr. Weston
(after whom Weston Chapel was named) was that of Mr.
Dray ton.

The Rev. J. G. Drayton was both a clergyman and a
planter, his plantation being the far-famed "Magnolia" in St.
Andrew's Parish, of which he was rector. Besides Magnolia

246

Appendix

chapel built by him, he ministered regularly for many years
from about 1850, to two other chapels for the Negroes —
Barker's and Magwood's, in the same parish. From a letter of
a descendant of Mr. Dray ton's, these extracts are quoted rather
freely :

"In looking back to them, I now realize how out of the
ordinary these Services were; how beautiful the feeling exist
ing between the priest and his people; how simple, sweet, and
uplifting it all was — even to a little child — to sit there listening
to his words, feeling that greater love through his love. The
picture of him that I carry in my memory I wish that I might
send to you. One cannot put an influence into words. His
face during the prayers ; the high, weird singing of the Negroes
in the familiar hymns; the breath of the fresh spring woods
as it brought the Easter message through the wide windows —
all blend to make the memory. I remember, too, a cermony
that was always amusing. It was his habit before Service to
distribute among the poorest of the congregation a contribution
which, later, they placed, with the air of millionaires, in the
alms basin. And then, after 'Marse John' had exhorted them
to his and their satisfaction, there was a great crowding around
his small phaeton. The drive home was frequently made lively,
and precarious as well, because of the gifts of 'frizzle fowls'
and 'yard aigs.' The roads were often bad and the eggs good,
and one had to be careful."

After the destruction of Sherman's raid, being left very
poor and the phaeton destroyed, Mr. Drayton, though an old
man, never faltered but used to walk some twelve or sixteen
miles each Sunday to hold at least three Services in the houses
of the parish. (The chapels were burned in the raid.)

NOTE K

(Chapter VII, page 197)

Notable among the founders of schools and parishes was
John W. Perry, who spent his life in Tarboro, N. C., as rector,
founder of a parochial school, and missionary over a wide

247

Appendix

area. From his school went his gifted son, now Principal of
St. Athanasius', Brunswick, Ga. Another is the Rev. James
S. Russell, D. D., founder of St. Paul's School and many
missions, and Archdeacon of Southern Virginia. Had it not
been for St. Augustine's, and St. Paul's, the Church would be
barren indeed of workers. Still another is the Rev. Kinchins
C. Bishop, whose strong personality has quickened the life of
the negro churches of New York, and helped to treble their
growth. Others are the Rev. Henry S. McDuffy, long a
worker in North Carolina, now a fine spiritual power, with
Dr. Henry Phillips, in the life of Philadelphia; the Rev.
Primus B. Alston, founder of the parish and school in
Charlotte, N. C., the soldier of steadfast faith and loyalty; the
Rev. Geo. F. Bragg, a church-builder in his first years in
Virginia, and for thirty years rector of old St. James',
Baltimore, whose intense love for the Church has been con
tagious, and whose loyalty to his race has been an inspiration
to them; the Rev. Geo. G. Middleton, who built his church
and rectory in Natchez, Miss., for he was a carpenter and
followed his Master in trade and calling; the Rev. William V.
Tunnell, Warden and Professor in King Hall and rector of
St. Phillips, Washington, an inspiring teacher in classroom and
parish; the Rt. Rev. Henry B. Delaney, D. D., Dean of St.
Augustine's Raleigh, his Alma Mater, Archdeacon of negro
work, and, since 1918, Suffragan Bishop of N. C., and acting
in that office for all the Carolinas ; the Rev. Dr. W. T. Hermi
tage who served nearly all his ministry in North Carolina,
building churches and giving a son to the ministry.

Education was bringing about new class relationships within
the negro race itself as well as between the Negroes and the
Whites; and upon these men and their associates devolved the
task of adjusting these relationships. Wisely, with Christian
patience and grace and faith, have they accepted the call and
met the difficult duties. Looking back upon these forty years,
it must fill the student of the story with admiration for these
sane, steady, Christian leaders. Reflecting upon the great
difficulties which beset them, surely only the most profound
sympathy must be felt.

248

Appendix
NOTE L

(Chapter VII, page 200)

The story of Mr. Dodge is interesting, and his benefaction,
in this region certainly, has but one parallel — that of Mr.
Clarkson in South Carolina, which failed because of pre-war
adverse laws.

Young Dodge came, about 1884, to visit his father, whose
large interests were near Brunswick. The beauty of the sur
roundings, still with the scars of war apparent everywhere,
the ruins of the old churches, the unshepherded Negroes wan
dering astray, the poverty from which recovery was necessarily
slow — all these appealed to his fine sensibilities. He determined
to apply for Holy Orders and devote himself to the negro
people of the islands. The story of Frederica parish had
been a romance; its ruin formed an irresistible appeal. On
the foundation of the ruins he began to build, and, with the
building, his vision enlarged to include the evangelization of
some thirty-nine counties. After the earlier structures had
been reared, he was ordained, and then proceeded to devote
$72,000 to the Missions, of which he became Missionary Trustee
with successive rectors of Frederica as Trustees in turn.
With the approval of the Bishop, he took over the negro
mission work of the Diocese. One by one, mission-chapels
(used often as schools during the week) were built, served
sometimes by priests, sometimes by teachers who were also
lay readers. The Rev Mr. Winn came first, as Assistant
and remains in charge to this day.

One of the most noted of Mr. Dodge's negro teachers was
J. B. Gillespie, who went from the Sewanee St. Mark's
Mission, in 1875, as lay reader of St. Perpetua Chapel and
School, of which he was the first teacher. Gillespie's father
had been chief of one of the black tribes of Africa. He was
captured in battle and sold to one of the last slave-ships
smuggling cargoes into America. In America, he came into
the hands of Col. Peter Turney (afterwards Governor of
Tennessee), a man of remarkable power and humanity.
Gillespie was treated by the Colonel with due appreciation of

249

Appendix

his native standing. So Gillespie, the teacher, was a prince
once removed from his native land ; and he was one in character
and in intellectual reach. Eventually he was ordained, intend
ing to return to Africa as a Christian priest; but a fever
epidemic through which he nursed his people, carried him away
at its close, and he was buried by his chapel in 1887. The
older people still revere his name.

NOTE M

(Chapter VII, page 207)

The story of such establishments is not without its romance.
These have been difficult to secure; but there are doubtless
many more to parallel this tribute which is taken from
The Church Advocate, of August, 1921. In the initial work
leading to the foundation of Epiphany, Orange, Miss Ruth
Mason was the moving spirit. She opened a Sunday School
for the Negroes of the old parish, and has been a devoted
friend and co-worker ever since. Says The Advocate, "In
spite of her advanced age, she is worth more to the work in
Orange than a curate. If we only had a few more such in
every northern community, Church extension among our group
in such localities would become vitally real. Miss Mason
was also instrumental in getting St. Andrew's, Patterson,
under way."

250

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PROBLEMS OF THE PRESENT SOUTH — E. G. Murphy. Longmans,

Green & Co., New York. 1909.
THE UPWARD PATH — M. Helm. Young People's Missionary

Movement, New York. 1909.
THE NEGRO RACES — J. Dowd, 2 vols. Neale Publishing Co.,

New York. 1914.
THE NEGRO— W. E. B. DuBois, Ph. D. Henry Holt & Co.,

New York. 1915.

THE BASIS OF ASCENDENCY — E. G. Murphy. 1918.
AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY — U. B. Phillips. Appleton, New

York. 1918.
NEGRO LIFE IN THE SOUTH — W. D. Weatherford, Ph. D.

Association Press, New York. 1918.
ENEAS AFRICANUS — H. S. Edwards. J. W. Burke Co.,

Macon, Ga.
THE SOUL OF JOHN BROWN — Stephen Graham. Macmillan

Company, New York. 1920.
AFRICA: SLAVE OR FREE? — J. H. Harris. E. P. Button & Co.,

New York. 1920.
THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO — B. Brawley.

Macmillan Company, New York. 1921.
THE NEGRO YEAR BOOK — M. N. Work. Negro Year Book

Publishing Co., Tuskegee, Alabama. 1922.
MANUAL OF AFRO-AMERICAN CHURCH WORK — G. F. Bragg.

1922.
THE TREND OF THE RACES — G. E. Haynes. Missionary

Education Movement, New York. 1922.
IN THE VANGUARD OF A RACE — L. H. Hammond, Missionary

Education Movement, New York. 1922.
NEGRO HISTORICAL CALENDAR. Roxbury Publishing Co., Bos
ton, Mass.

251

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